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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Just and the Unjust, by Vaughan Kester,
+Illustrated by M. Leone Bracker
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Just and the Unjust
+
+Author: Vaughan Kester
+
+Release Date: January 3, 2005  [eBook #14581]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUST AND THE UNJUST***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
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+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE JUST AND THE UNJUST
+
+by
+
+VAUGHAN KESTER
+
+Author of _The Prodigal Judge_, etc.
+
+Illustrations by M. Leone Bracker
+
+Indianapolis
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+Publishers
+
+1912
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, I want you, Elizabeth!"]
+
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+I      FIGHTING SHRIMPLIN
+II     THE PRICE OF FOLLY
+III    STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
+IV     ADVENTURE IN EARNEST
+V      COLONEL GEORGE HARBISON
+VI     PUTTING ON THE SCREWS
+VII    THE BEAUTY OF ELIZABETH
+VIII   A GAMBLER AT HOME
+IX     THE STAR WITNESS
+X      HUSBAND AND WIFE
+XI     THE FINGER OF SUSPICION
+XII    JOE TELLS HIS STORY
+XIII   LIGHT IN DARKNESS
+XIV    THE GAMBLER'S THEORY
+XV     LOVE THAT ENDURES
+XVI    AT HIS OWN DOOR
+XVII   AN UNWILLING GUEST
+XVIII  FATHER AND SON
+XIX    SHRIMPLIN TO THE RESCUE
+XX     THE CAT AND THE MOUSE
+XXI    THE HOUSE OF CARDS
+XXII   GOOD MEN AND TRUE
+XXIII  THE LAST APPEAL
+XXIV   THE LAST LONG DAY
+XXV    ON THE HIGH IRON BRIDGE
+XXVI   CUSTER'S IDOL FALLS
+XXVII  FAITH IS RESTORED
+XXVIII THE LAST NIGHT IN JAIL
+XXIX   AT IDLE HOUR
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+FIGHTING SHRIMPLIN
+
+
+Custer felt it his greatest privilege to sit of a Sunday morning in his
+mother's clean and burnished kitchen and, while she washed the breakfast
+dishes, listen to such reflections as his father might care to indulge
+in.
+
+On these occasions the senior Shrimplin, commonly called Shrimp by his
+intimates, was the very picture of unconventional ease-taking as he
+lolled in his chair before the kitchen stove, a cracker box half filled
+with sawdust conveniently at hand.
+
+As far back as his memory went Custer could recall vividly these Sunday
+mornings, with the church bells ringing peacefully beyond the windows of
+his modest home, and his father in easy undress, just emerged from his
+weekly bath and pleasantly redolent of strong yellow soap, his feet
+incased in blue yarn socks--white at toe and heel--and the neckband of
+his fresh-starched shirt sawing away at the lobes of his freckled ears.
+On these occasions Mr. Shrimplin inclined to a certain sad conservatism
+as he discussed with his son those events of the week last passed which
+had left their impress on his mind. But what pleased Custer best was
+when his father, ceasing to be gently discursive and becoming vigorously
+personal, added yet another canto to the stirring epic of William
+Shrimplin.
+
+Custer was wholly and delightfully sympathetic. There was, he felt, the
+very choicest inspiration in the narrative, always growing and
+expanding, of his father's earlier career, before Mrs. Shrimplin came
+into his life, and as Mr. Shrimplin delicately intimated, tied him hand
+and foot. The same grounds of mutual understanding and intellectual
+dependence which existed between Custer and his father were lacking
+where Mrs. Shrimplin was concerned. She was unromantic, with a painfully
+literal cast of mind, though Custer--without knowing what is meant by a
+sense of humor, suspected her of this rare gift, a dangerous and
+destructive thing in woman. Privately considering her relation to his
+father, he was forced to the conclusion that their union was a most
+distressing instance of the proneness of really great minds to leave
+their deep channels and seek the shallow waters in the every-day
+concerns of life. He felt vaguely that she was narrow and provincial;
+for had she not always lived on the flats, a region bounded by the
+Square on the north and by Stoke's furniture factory on the south? On
+the west the flats extended as far as civilization itself extended in
+that direction, that is, to the gas house and the creek bank, while on
+the east they were roughly defined by Mitchell's tannery and the brick
+slaughter-house, beyond which vacant lots merged into cow pastures, the
+cow pastures yielding in their turn to the real country, where the level
+valley rolled up into hills which tilted the great green fields to the
+sun.
+
+Mrs. Shrimplin had been born on the flats, and the flats had witnessed
+her meeting and mating with Shrimplin, when that gentleman had first
+appeared in Mount Hope in the interest of Whiting's celebrated
+tooth-powder, to the use of which he was not personally committed. At
+that time he was also an itinerant bill-poster and had his lodgings at
+Maxy Schaffer's Railroad Hotel hard by the B. & O. tracks.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin was five feet three, and narrow chested. A drooping flaxen
+mustache shaded a sloping chin and a loose under lip, while a pair of
+pale eyes looked sadly out upon the world from the shadow of a hooked
+nose.
+
+Mr. Joe Montgomery, Mrs. Shrimplin's brother-in-law, present on the
+occasion of her marriage to the little bill-poster, had critically
+surveyed the bridegroom and had been moved to say to a friend, "Shrimp
+certainly do favor a peanut!"
+
+Mr. Montgomery's comparative criticism of her husband's appearance had
+in due season reached the ears of the bride, and had caused a rupture
+in the family that the years had not healed, but her resentment had been
+more a matter of justice to herself than that she felt the criticism to
+be wholly inapt.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin had now become a public servant, for certain gasolene
+lamps in the town of Mount Hope were his proud and particular care. Any
+night he could be seen seated in his high two-wheeled cart drawn by a
+horse large in promise of speed but small in achievement, a hissing
+gasolene torch held between his knees, making his way through that part
+of the town where gas-lamps were as yet unknown. He still further added
+to his income by bill-posting and paper-hanging, for he belonged to the
+rank and file of life, with a place in the procession well toward the
+tail.
+
+But Custer had no suspicion of this. He never saw his father as the
+world saw him. He would have described his eye as piercing; he would
+have said, in spite of the slouching uncertainty that characterized all
+his movements, that he was as quick as a cat; and it was only Custer who
+detected the note of authority in the meek tones of his father's voice.
+
+And Custer was as like the senior Shrimplin as it was possible for
+fourteen to be like forty-eight. His mother said, "He certainly looks
+for all the world like his pa!" but her manner of saying it left doubt
+as to whether she rejoiced in the fact; for, while Mr. Shrimplin was
+undoubtedly a hero to Custer, he was not and never had been and never
+could be a hero to Mrs. Shrimplin. She saw in him only what the world
+saw--a stoop-shouldered little man who spent six days of the seven in
+overalls that were either greasy or pasty.
+
+It was a vagary of Mr. Shrimplin's that ten reckless years of his life
+had been spent in the West, the far West, the West of cow-towns and bad
+men; that for this decade he had flourished on bucking broncos and in
+gilded bars, the admired hero of a variety of deft homicides. Out of his
+inner consciousness he had evolved a sprightly epic of which he was the
+central figure, a figure, according to Custer's firm belief, sinister,
+fateful with big jingling silver spurs at his heels and iron on his
+hips, whose specialty was manslaughter.
+
+In the creation of his romance he might almost be said to have acquired
+a literary habit of mind, to which he was measurably helped by the
+fiction he read.
+
+Custer devoured the same books; but he never suspected his father of the
+crime of plagiarism, nor guessed that his choicest morsels of adventure
+involved a felony. Mrs. Shrimplin felt it necessary to protest:
+
+"No telling with what nonsense you are filling that boy's head!"
+
+"I hope," said Mr. Shrimplin, narrowing his eyes to a slit, as if he
+expected to see pictured on the back of their lids the panorama of
+Custer's future, "I hope I am filling his head with just nonsense
+enough so he will never crawfish, no matter what kind of a proposition
+he goes up against!"
+
+Custer colored almost guiltily. Could he ever hope to attain to the grim
+standard his father had set for him?
+
+"I wasn't much older than him when I shot Murphy at Fort Worth,"
+continued Mr. Shrimplin, "You've heard me tell about him, son--old
+one-eye Murphy of Texarcana?"
+
+"He died, I suppose!" said. Mrs. Shrimplin, wringing out her dish-rag.
+"Dear knows! I wonder you ain't been hung long ago!"
+
+"Did he die!" rejoined Mr. Shrimplin ironically. "Well, they usually die
+when I begin to throw lead!" He tugged fiercely at the ends of his
+drooping flaxen mustache and gazed into the wide and candid eyes of his
+son.
+
+"Like I should give you the particulars, Custer?" he inquired.
+
+Custer nodded eagerly, and Mr. Shrimplin cleared his throat.
+
+"He was called one-eye Murphy because he had only one eye--he'd lost the
+other in a rough-and-tumble fight; it had been gouged out by a feller's
+thumb. Murphy got the feller's ear, chewed it off as they was rolling
+over and over on the floor, so you might say they swapped even."
+
+"I wonder you'd pick on an afflicted person like that," observed Mrs.
+Shrimplin.
+
+"Afflicted! Well, he could see more and see further with that one eye
+than most men could with four!"
+
+"I should think four eyes would be confusin'," said Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin folded his arms across his narrow chest and permitted his
+glance to follow Mrs. Shrimplin's ample figure as she moved to and fro
+about the room; and when he spoke again a gentle melancholy had crept
+into his tone.
+
+"I dunno but a man makes a heap of sacrifices he never gets no credit
+for when he marries and settles down. The ladies ain't what they used to
+be. They look on a man now pretty much as a meal-ticket. I guess if a
+feller chewed off another feller's ear in Mount Hope he'd never hear the
+last of it!"
+
+As neither Mrs. Shrimplin nor Custer questioned this point, Mr.
+Shrimplin reverted to his narrative.
+
+"I started in to tell you how I put Murphy out of business, didn't I,
+son? The facts brought out by the coroner's jury," embarking on what he
+conceived to be a bit of happy and elaborate realism, "was that I'd shot
+him in self-defense after he'd drawed a gun on me. He had heard I was at
+Fort Worth--not that I was looking for trouble, which I never done; but
+I never turned it down when any one was at pains to fetch it to me; I
+was always willing they should leave it with me for to have a merry
+time. Murphy heard I'd said if he'd come to Fort Worth I'd take him home
+and make a pet of him; and he'd sent back word that he was looking for
+a man with two ears to play with; and I'd said mine was on loose and for
+him to come and pull 'em off. After that there was just one thing he
+could do if he wanted to be well thought of, and he done it. He hit the
+town hell-snorting, and so mad he was fit to be tied." Mr. Shrimplin
+paused to permit this striking phrase to lay hold of Custer's
+imagination. "Yes, sir, hell-snorting, and so bad he was plum scairt of
+himself. He said he was looking for a gentleman who had sent him word he
+had two ears to contribute to the evening's gaiety, by which I knowed he
+meant me and was in earnest. He was full of boot-leg whisky--"
+
+"What kind of whisky's that, pa?" asked Custer.
+
+"That," said Mr. Shrimplin, looking into the round innocent face of his
+son, "that's the stuff the traders used to sell the Indians. Strong?
+Well, you might say it was middling strong--just middling--about three
+drops of it would make a rabbit spit in a bulldog's face!"
+
+It was on one memorable twenty-seventh of November that Mr. Shrimplin
+reached this height of verbal felicity, and being Thanksgiving day, it
+was, aside from the smell of strong yellow soap and the fresh-starched
+white shirt, very like a Sunday.
+
+He and Custer sat before the kitchen stove and in the intervals of his
+narrative listened to the wind rise without, and watched the sparse
+flakes of fine snow that it brought coldly out of the north, where
+the cloud banks lay leaden and chill on the far horizon.
+
+[Illustration: "I started to tell you how I put Murphy out of
+business."]
+
+Mr. Shrimplin had risen early that day, or, as he told Custer, he had
+"got up soon", and long before his son had left his warm bed in the
+small room over the kitchen, was well on his rounds in his high
+two-wheeled cart, with the rack under the seat which held the great cans
+of gasolene from which the lamps were filled. He had only paused at Maxy
+Schaffer's Railroad Hotel to partake of what he called a Kentucky
+breakfast--a drink of whisky and a chew of tobacco--a simple dietary
+protection against the evils of an empty stomach, to which he
+particularly drew Custer's attention.
+
+His father's occupation was entirely satisfactory to Custer. Being
+employed by the town gave him an official standing, perhaps not so
+distinguished as that of a policeman, but still eminently worth while;
+and Mr. Shrimplin added not a little to the sense of its importance by
+dilating on the intrigues of ambitious rivals who desired to wrest his
+contract from him; and he impressed Custer, who frequently accompanied
+him on his rounds, with the wisdom of keeping the lamps that shone upon
+the homes of members of the town council in especially good order.
+Furthermore, there were possibilities of adventure in the occupation; it
+took Mr. Shrimplin into out-of-the-way streets and unfrequented alleys,
+and, as Custer knew, he always went armed. Sometimes, when in an
+unusually gracious mood, his father permitted him to verify this fact
+by feeling his bulging hip pocket. The feel of it was vastly pleasing to
+Custer, particularly when Mr. Shrimplin had to tell of strangers engaged
+in mysterious conversation on dark street corners, who slunk away as he
+approached. More than this, it was a matter of public knowledge that he
+had had numerous controversies in low portions of the town touching the
+right of the private citizen to throw stones at the street lamps; to
+Custer he made dire threats. He'd "toss a scare into them red necks yet!
+They'd bust his lamps once too often--he was laying for them! He knowed
+pretty well who done it, and when he found out for sure--" He winked at
+Custer, leaving it to his son's imagination to determine just what form
+his vengeance would take, and Custer, being nothing if not sanguinary,
+prayed for bloodshed.
+
+But the thing that pleased the boy best was his father's account of
+those meetings with mysterious strangers. How as he approached they
+moved off with many a furtive backward glance; how he made as if to
+drive away in the opposite direction, and then at the first corner
+turned swiftly about and raced down some parallel street in hot pursuit,
+to come on them again, to their great and manifest discomfiture.
+Circumstantially he described each turn he made, down what streets he
+drove Bill at a gallop, up which he walked that trustworthy animal; all
+was elaborately worked out. The chase, however, always ended one
+way--the strangers disappeared unaccountably, and, search as he might,
+he could not find them again, but he and Custer felt certain that his
+activity had probably averted some criminal act.
+
+In short, to Mr. Shrimplin and his son the small events of life
+magnified themselves, becoming distorted and portentous. A man, emerging
+suddenly from an alley in the dusk of the early evening, furnished them
+with a theme for infinite speculation and varied conjecture; that nine
+times out of ten the man said, "Hello, Shrimp!" and passed on his way
+perfectly well known to the little lamplighter was a matter of not the
+slightest importance. Sometimes, it is true, Mr. Shrimplin told of the
+salutation, but the man was always a stranger to him, and that he should
+have spoken, calling him by name, he and Custer agreed only added to the
+sinister mystery of the encounter.
+
+It was midday on that twenty-seventh of November when Mr. Shrimplin
+killed Murphy of the solitary eye, and he reached the climax of the
+story just as Mrs. Shrimplin began to prepare the dressing for the small
+turkey that was to be the principal feature of their four-o'clock
+dinner. The morning's scanty fall of snow had been so added to as time
+passed that now it completely whitened the strip of brown turf in the
+little side yard beyond the kitchen windows.
+
+"I think," said Mr. Shrimplin, "we are going to see some weather. Well,
+snow ain't a bad thing." His dreamy eyes rested on Custer for an
+instant; they seemed to invite a question.
+
+"No?" said Custer interrogatively.
+
+"If I was going to murder a man, I don't reckon I'd care to do it when
+there was snow on the ground."
+
+Mrs. Shrimplin here suggested cynically that perhaps he dreaded cold
+feet, but her husband ignored this. To what he felt to be the
+commonplaceness of her outlook he had long since accustomed himself. He
+merely said:
+
+"I suppose more criminals has been caught because they done their crimes
+when it was snowing than any other way. Only chance a feller would have
+to get off without leaving tracks would be in a balloon; I don't know as
+I ever heard of a murderer escaping in a balloon, but I reckon it could
+be done."
+
+He disliked to relinquish such an original idea, and the subject of
+murderers and balloons, with such ramifications as suggested themselves
+to his mind, occupied him until dinner-time. He quitted the table to
+prepare for his night's work, and at five o'clock backed wild Bill into
+the shafts of his high cart, lighted the hissing gasolene torch, and
+mounted to his seat.
+
+"I expect he'll want his head to-night; he's got a game look," he said
+to Custer, nodding toward Bill. Then, as he tucked a horse blanket
+snugly about his legs, he added: "It's a caution the way he gets over
+the ground. I never seen a horse that gets over the ground like Bill
+does."
+
+Which was probably true enough, for Bill employed every known gait.
+
+"He's a mighty well-broke horse!" agreed Custer in a tone of sincere
+conviction.
+
+"He is. He's got more gaits than you can shake a stick at!" said Mr.
+Shrimplin.
+
+Privately he labored under the delusion that Bill was dangerous; even
+years of singular rectitude on Bill's part had failed to alter his
+original opinion on this one point, and he often told Custer that he
+would have felt lost with a horse just anybody could have driven, for
+while Bill might not and probably would not have suited most people, he
+suited him all right.
+
+"Well, good-by, son," said Mr. Shrimplin, slapping Bill with the lines.
+
+Bill went out of the alley back of Mr. Shrimplin's small barn, his head
+held high, and taking tremendous strides that somehow failed in their
+purpose if speed was the result desired.
+
+Twilight deepened; the snow fell softly, silently, until it became a
+ghostly mist that hid the town--hid the very houses on opposite sides of
+the street, and through this flurry Bill shuffled with unerring
+instinct, dragging Mr. Shrimplin from lamp-post to lamp-post, until
+presently down the street a long row of lights blazed red in the
+swirling smother of white.
+
+Custer reëntered the house. The day held the sentiment of Sunday and
+this he found depressing. He had also dined ambitiously, and this he
+found even more depressing. He wondered vaguely, but with no large
+measure of hope, if there would be sledding in the morning. Probably it
+would turn warm during the night; he knew how those things went. From
+his seat by the stove he watched the hurrying flakes beyond the windows,
+and as he watched, the darkness came down imperceptibly until he ceased
+to see beyond the four walls of the room.
+
+Mrs. Shrimplin was busy with her mending. She did not attempt
+conversation with her son, though she occasionally cast a curious glance
+in his direction; he was not usually so silent. All at once the boy
+started.
+
+"What's that?" he cried.
+
+"La, Custer, how you startle a body! It's the town bell. I should think
+you'd know; you've heard it often enough." As she spoke she glanced at
+the clock on the shelf in the corner of the room. "I guess that clock's
+stopped again," she added, but in the silence that followed her words
+they both heard it tick.
+
+The bell rang on.
+
+"It ain't half past seven yet. Maybe it's a fire!" said Custer. He
+quitted his chair and moved to the window. "I wish they'd give the ward.
+They'd ought to. How's a body to know--"
+
+"Set down, Custer!" commanded his mother sharply. "You ain't going out!
+You know your pa don't allow you to go to no fires after night."
+
+"You don't call this night!" He was edging toward the door.
+
+"Yes, I do!"
+
+"A quarter after seven ain't night!" he expostulated.
+
+"No arguments, Custer! You sit down! I won't have you trapesing about
+the streets."
+
+Custer turned back from the door and resumed his seat.
+
+"Why don't they give the ward? I never heard such a fool way of ringing
+for a fire!" he said.
+
+They were silent, intent and listening. Now the wind was driving the
+sound clamorously across the town.
+
+"They ain't give the ward yet!" said Custer at length, in a tone of
+great disgust. "I could ring for a fire better than that!"
+
+"I wish your pa was to home!" said Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+As she spoke they caught the muffled sound of hurrying feet, then the
+clamor of voices, eager and excited; but presently these died away in
+the distance, and again they heard only the bell, which rang on and on
+and on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+THE PRICE OF FOLLY
+
+
+John North occupied the front rooms on the first floor of the
+three-story brick structure that stood at the corner of Main Street and
+the Square. The only other tenant on the floor with him was Andy
+Gilmore, who had apartments at the back of the building. Until quite
+recently Mr. North and Mr. Gilmore had been friends and boon companions,
+but of late North had rather avoided this neighbor of his.
+
+Mount Hope said that North had parted with the major portion of his
+small fortune to Gilmore. Mount Hope also said and believed, and with
+most excellent justification for so doing, that North was a fool--a
+truth he had told himself so many times within the last month that it
+had become the utter weariness of iteration.
+
+He was a muscular young fellow of twenty-six, with a handsome face, and,
+when he chose, a kindly charming manner. He had been--and he was fully
+aware of this--as idle and as worthless as any young fellow could
+possibly be; he was even aware that the worst Mount Hope said of him was
+much better than he deserved. In those hours that were such a new
+experience to him, when he denied himself other companionship than his
+own accusing conscience; when the contemplation of the naked shape of
+his folly absorbed him to the exclusion of all else, he would sit before
+his fire with the poker clutched in his hands and his elbows resting on
+his knees, poking between the bars of the grate, poking moodily, while
+under his breath he cursed the weakness that had made him what he was.
+
+With his hair in disorder on his handsome shapely head, he would sit
+thus hours together, not wholly insensible to a certain grim sense of
+humor, since in all his schemes of life he had made no provision for the
+very thing that had happened. He wondered mightily what a fellow could
+do with his last thousand dollars, especially when a fellow chanced to
+be in love and meditated nothing less than marriage; for North's
+day-dream, coming like the sun through a rift in the clouds to light up
+the somberness of his solitary musings, was all of love and Elizabeth
+Herbert. He wondered what she had heard of him--little that was good, he
+told himself, and probably much that was to his discredit. Yet as he sat
+there he was slowly shaping plans for the future. One point was clear:
+he must leave Mount Hope, where he had run his course, where he was
+involved and committed in ways he could not bear to think of. To go
+meant that he would be forsaking much that was evil; a situation from
+which he could not extricate himself otherwise. It also meant that he
+would be leaving Elizabeth Herbert; but perhaps she had not even guessed
+his secret, for he had not spoken of love; or perhaps having divined it,
+she cared nothing for him. Even so, his regeneration seemed in itself a
+thing worth while. What he was to do, how make a place for himself, he
+had scarcely considered; but his inheritance was wasted, and of the
+comfortable thousands that had come to him, next to nothing remained.
+
+In the intervals between his musings Mr. North got together such of his
+personal belongings as he deemed worth the removal; he was surprised to
+find how few were the things he really valued. On the grounds of a
+chastened taste in such matters he threw aside most of his clothes; he
+told himself that he did not care to be judged by such mere externals as
+the shade of a tie or the color of a pair of hose. Under his hands--for
+the spirit of reform was strong upon him--his rooms took on a sober
+appearance. He amused himself by making sundry penitential offerings to
+the flames; numerous evidences of his unrighteous bachelorhood
+disappearing from walls and book-shelves. Coincident with this he owned
+to a feeling of intense satisfaction. What remained he would have his
+friend Marshall Langham sell after he was gone, his finances having
+suddenly become of paramount importance.
+
+But the days passed, and though he was not able to bring himself to
+leave Mount Hope, his purpose in its final aspect underwent no change.
+He lived to himself, and his old haunts and his old friends saw nothing
+of him. Evelyn Langham, whom he had known before she married his friend
+Marshall, was fortunately absent from town. Her letters to him remained
+unanswered; the last one he had burned unread. He was sick of the
+devious crooked paths he had trodden; he might not be just the stuff of
+which saints are made, but there was the hope in his heart of better
+things than he had yet known.
+
+At about the time Mr. Shrimplin was attacking his Thanksgiving turkey,
+North, from his window, watched the leaden clouds that overhung the
+housetops. From the frozen dirt of the unpaved streets the keen wind
+whipped up scanty dust clouds, mingling them with sudden flurries of
+fine snow. Save for the passing of an occasional pedestrian who breasted
+the gale with lowered head, the Square was deserted. Staring down on it,
+North drummed idly on the window-pane. What an unspeakable fool he had
+been, and what a price his folly was costing him! As he stood there,
+heavy-hearted and bitter in spirit, he saw Marshall Langham crossing the
+Square in the direction of his office. He watched his friend's
+wind-driven progress for a moment, then slipped into his overcoat and,
+snatching up his hat, hurried from the room.
+
+Langham, with Moxlow, his law partner, occupied two handsomely furnished
+rooms on the first floor, of the one building in Mount Hope that was
+distinctly an office building, since its sky-scraping five stories were
+reached by an elevator. Here North found Langham--a man only three or
+four years older than himself, tall, broad-shouldered, with an
+oratorical air of distinction and a manner that proclaimed him the
+leading young lawyer at the local bar.
+
+He greeted North cordially, and the latter observed that his friend's
+face was unusually flushed, and that beads of perspiration glistened on
+his forehead, which he frequently wiped with a large linen handkerchief.
+
+"What have you been doing with yourself, Jack?" he demanded, sliding his
+chair back from the desk at which he was seated. "I haven't had a
+glimpse of you in days."
+
+"I have been keeping rather quiet."
+
+"What's the matter? Liver out of whack?" Langham smiled complacently.
+
+"Worse than that!" North rejoined moodily.
+
+"That's saying a good deal? What is it, Jack?"
+
+But North was not inclined to lay bare his heart; he doubted if Langham
+could be made to comprehend any part of his suffering.
+
+"I am getting down to my last dollar, Marsh. I don't know where the
+money went, but it's gone," he finally said.
+
+Langham nodded.
+
+"You have certainly had your little time, Jack, and it's been a
+perfectly good little time, too! What are you going to do when you are
+cleaned out?"
+
+"That's part of the puzzle, Marsh, that's the very hell and all of it."
+
+"Well, you have had your fun--lots of it!" said Langham, swabbing his
+face.
+
+North noticed the embroidered initial in the corner of the handkerchief.
+
+"Fun! Was it fun?" he demanded with sudden heat.
+
+"You took it for fun. Personally I think it was a pretty fair
+imitation."
+
+"Yes, I took it for fun, or mistook it; that's the pity of it! I can
+forgive myself for almost everything but having been a fool!"
+
+"That's always a hard dose to swallow," agreed Langham. He was willing
+to enter into his friend's mood.
+
+"Have you ever tried to swallow it?" asked North.
+
+"I can't say I have. Some of us haven't any business with a
+conscience--our blood's too red. I've made up my mind that, while I may
+be a man of moral impulses I am also a creature of purest accident. It's
+the same with you, Jack. You are a pretty decent fellow down under the
+skin; there's still the divine spark in you, though perhaps it doesn't
+burn bright enough to warm the premises. But it's there, like a shaft of
+light from a gem, a gem in the rough--though I believe I'm mixing my
+metaphors."
+
+"Why don't you say a pearl in the mire?"
+
+"But that doesn't really take from your pearlship, though it may dim
+your luster. No, Jack, the accidents have been to your morals instead of
+your arms and legs. That's how I explain it in my own case, and it's
+saved me many a bad quarter of an hour with myself. I know I'd be on
+crutches if the vicissitudes of which I have been the victim could be
+given physical expression."
+
+"Marsh," said North soberly, "I am going away."
+
+"You are going to do what, Jack?" demanded the lawyer.
+
+"I am going to leave Mount Hope. I am going West for a bit, and after I
+am gone I want you to sell the stuff in my rooms for me; have an auction
+and get rid of every stick of the fool truck!"
+
+"Why, what's wrong? Going away--when?"
+
+"At once, to-morrow--to-night maybe. I don't know quite when, but very
+soon. I want you to get rid of all my stuff, do you understand? Before
+long I'll write you my address and you can send me whatever it brings. I
+expect I'll need the money--"
+
+"Why, you're crazy, man!" cried Langham.
+
+North moved impatiently. He had not come to discuss the merit of his
+plans.
+
+"On the contrary I am having my first gleam of reason," he said briefly.
+
+"Of course you know best, Jack," acquiesced Langham after a moment's
+silence.
+
+"You'll do what I ask of you, Marsh?"
+
+"Oh, hang it, yes." He hesitated for an instant and then said 'frankly.
+"You know I'm rather in your debt; I don't suppose five hundred dollars
+would square what I have had from you first and last."
+
+"I hope you won't mention it! Whenever it is quite convenient, that will
+be soon enough."
+
+"Thank you, Jack!" said Langham gratefully. "The fact is the pickings
+here are pretty small."
+
+Again the lawyer mopped his brow and again North moved impatiently.
+
+"Don't say another word about it, Marsh," he repeated. "McBride has
+agreed to take the last of my gas bonds off my hands; that will get me
+away from here."
+
+"How many have you left?" asked Langham curiously.
+
+"Ten," said North.
+
+Langham whistled.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you are down to that? Why, you told me once you
+held a hundred!"
+
+"So I did once, but it costs money to be the kind of fool I've been!
+said North.
+
+"Well, I suppose you are doing the sensible thing in getting out of
+this. Have you any notion where you are going or what you'll do?"
+
+North shook his head.
+
+"Oh, you'll get into something!" the lawyer encouraged. "When shall you
+see McBride?"
+
+"This afternoon. Why?"
+
+"I was going to say that I was just there with Atkinson. He and McBride
+have been in a timber speculation, and Atkinson handed over three
+thousand dollars in cash to the old man. I suppose he has banked it in
+some heap of scrap-iron on the premises!" said Langham laughing.
+
+"I think I shall go there now," resolved North. While he was speaking he
+had moved to the door leading into the hail, and had opened it.
+
+"Hold on, John!" said Langham, detaining him. "Evelyn is home. She came
+quite unexpectedly to-day; you won't leave town without getting up to
+the house to see her?"
+
+"I think I shall," replied North hastily. "I much prefer not to say
+good-by."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" cried Langham.
+
+"No, Marsh, I don't intend to say good-by to any one!" North quietly
+turned back into the room.
+
+"I had intended having you up to the house to-night for a blow-out,"
+urged Langham, but North shook his head. "You and Gilmore, Jack; and by
+the way, this puts me in a nice hole! I have already asked Gilmore, and
+he's coming. Now, how the devil am to get out of it? I can't spring him
+alone on the family circle, and I don't want to hurt his feelings!"
+
+"Call it off, Marsh; say I couldn't come; that's a good enough excuse to
+give Gilmore. Why, that fellow's a common card-sharp, you can't ask
+Evelyn to meet him!"
+
+A slight noise in the hall caused both men to glance toward the door,
+where they saw just beyond the threshold the swarthy-faced Gilmore.
+
+There was a brief embarrassed silence, and then North nodded to the
+new-comer, but the salutation was not returned.
+
+"Well, good-by, Marsh!" he said, and turned to the door. As he brushed
+past the gambler their eyes met for an instant, and in that instant
+Gilmore's face turned livid with rage.
+
+"I'll fix you for that, so help me God, I will!" he said, but North made
+no answer. He passed down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the
+street.
+
+McBride's was directly opposite on the corner of High Street and the
+Square; a mean two-story structure of frame, across the shabby front of
+which hung a shabby creaking sign bearing witness that within might be
+found: "Archibald McBride, Hardware and Cutlery, Implements and Bar
+Iron." McBride had kept store on that corner time out of mind.
+
+He was an austere unapproachable old man, having no relatives of whom
+any one knew; with few friends and fewer intimates; a rich man,
+according to the Mount Hope standard, and a miser according to the Mount
+Hope gossip, with the miser's traditional suspicion of banks. It was
+rumored that he had hidden away vast sums of money in his dingy store,
+or in the closely-shuttered rooms above, where the odds and ends of the
+merchandise in which he dealt had accumulated in rusty and neglected
+heaps.
+
+The old man wore an air of mystery, and this air of mystery extended to
+his place of business. It was dark and dirty and ill-kept. On the
+brightest summer day the sunlight stole vaguely in through grimy
+cobwebbed windows. The dust of years had settled deep on unused shelves
+and, in abandoned corners, and whole days were said to pass when no one
+but the ancient merchant himself entered the building. Yet in spite of
+the trade that had gone elsewhere he had grown steadily richer year by
+year.
+
+When North entered the store he found McBride busy with his books in his
+small back office, a lean black cat asleep on the desk at his elbow.
+
+"Good afternoon, John!" said the old merchant as he turned from his high
+desk, removing as he did so a pair of heavy steel-rimmed spectacles,
+that dominated a high-bridged nose which in turn dominated a wrinkled
+and angular face.
+
+"I thought I should find you here!" said North.
+
+"You'll always find me here of a week-day," and he gave the young fellow
+the fleeting suggestion of a smile. He had a liking for North, whose
+father, years before, had been one of the few friends he had made in
+Mount Hope.
+
+The Norths had been among the town's earliest settlers, John's
+grandfather having taken his place among the pioneers when Mount Hope
+had little but its name to warrant its place on the map. At his death
+Stephen, his only son, assumed the family headship, married, toiled,
+thrived and finished his course following his wife to the old
+burying-ground after a few lonely heart-breaking months, and leaving
+John without kin, near or far, but with a good name and fair riches.
+
+"I have brought you those gas bonds, Mr. McBride," said North, going at
+once to the purpose of his visit.
+
+The old merchant nodded understandingly.
+
+"I hope you can arrange to let me have the money for them to-day,"
+continued North.
+
+"I think I can manage it, John. Atkinson and Judge Langham's boy, Marsh,
+were just here and left a bit of cash. Maybe I can make up the sum."
+While he was speaking, he had gone to the safe which stood open in one
+corner of the small office.
+
+In a moment he returned to the desk with a roll of bills in his hands
+which he counted lovingly, placing them, one by one, in a neat pile
+before him.
+
+"You're still in the humor to go away?" he asked, when he had finished
+counting the money.
+
+"Never more so!" said North briefly.
+
+"What do you think of young Langham, John? Will he ever be as sharp a
+lawyer as the judge?"
+
+"He's counted very brilliant," evaded North.
+
+He rather dreaded the old merchant when his love of gossip got the
+better of his usual reserve.
+
+"I hadn't seen the fellow in months to speak to until to-day. He's a
+clever talker and has a taking way with him, but if the half I hear is
+true, he's going the devil's own gait. He's a pretty good friend to Andy
+Gilmore, ain't he--that horse-racing, card-playing neighbor of yours?"
+He pushed the bills toward North. "Run them over, John, and see if I
+have made any mistake." He slipped off his glasses again and fell to
+polishing them with his handkerchief. "It's all right, John?" he asked
+at length.
+
+"Yes, quite right, thank you." And North produced the bonds from an
+inner pocket of his coat and handed them to McBride.
+
+"So you are going to get out of this place, John? You're going West, you
+say. What will you do there?" asked the old merchant as he carefully
+examined the bonds.
+
+"I don't know yet."
+
+"I'm trusting you're through with your folly, John; that your crop of
+wild oats is in the ground. You've made a grand sowing!"
+
+"I have," answered North, laughing in spite of himself.
+
+"You'll be empty-handed I'm thinking, but for the money you take from
+here."'
+
+"Very nearly so."
+
+"How much have you gone through with, John, do you mind rightly?"
+
+"Fifteen or twenty thousand dollars."
+
+"A nice bit of money!" He shook his head and chuckled dryly. "It's
+enough to make your father turn in his grave. He's said to me many a
+time when he was a bit close in his dealings with me, 'I'm, saving for
+my boy, Archie.' Eh? But it ain't always three generations from
+shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves; you've made a short cut of it! But
+you're going to do the wise thing, John; you've been a fool here, now go
+away and be a man! Let all devilishness alone and work hard; that's the
+antidote for idleness, and it's overmuch of idleness that's been your
+ruin."
+
+"I imagine it is," said North cheerfully.
+
+"You'll be making a clever man out of yourself, John," McBride continued
+graciously. "Not a flash in the pan like your friend Marshall Langham
+yonder. It's drink will do for him the same as it did for his
+grandfather, it's in the blood; but that was before your time."
+
+"I've heard of him; a remarkably able lawyer, wasn't he?"
+
+"Pooh! You'll hear a plenty of nonsense talked, and by very sensible
+people, too, about most drunken fools! He was a spender and a
+profligate, was old Marshall Langham; a tavern loafer, but a man of
+parts. Yes, he had a bit of a brain, when he was sober and of a mind to
+use it."
+
+One would scarcely have supposed that Archibald McBride, silent,
+taciturn, money-loving, possessed the taste for scandal that North knew
+he did possess. The old merchant continued garrulously.
+
+"They are a bad lot, John, those Langhams, but it took the smartest one
+of the whole tribe to get the better of me. I never told you that
+before, did I? It was old Marshall himself, and he flattered me into
+loaning him a matter of a hundred dollars once; I guess I have his note
+somewhere yet. But I swore then I'd have no more dealings with any of
+them, and I'm likely to keep my word as long as I keep my senses. It's
+the little things that prick the skin; that make a man bitter. I suppose
+the judge's boy has had his hand in your pocket? He looks like a man
+who'd be free enough with another's purse."
+
+But North shook his head.
+
+"No, no, I have only myself to blame," he said.
+
+"What do you hear of his wife? How's the marriage turning out?" and he
+shot the young fellow a shrewd questioning glance.
+
+"I know nothing about it," replied North, coloring slightly.
+
+"She'll hardly be publishing to the world that she's married a drunken
+profligate--"
+
+This did not seem to North to call for an answer, and he attempted none.
+He turned and moved toward the front of the store, followed by the old
+merchant. At the door he paused.
+
+"Thank you for your kindness, Mr. McBride!"
+
+"It was no kindness, just a matter of business" said McBride hastily.
+"I'm no philanthropist, John, but just a plain man of business who'll
+drive a close bargain if he can."
+
+"At any rate, I'm going to thank you," insisted North, smiling
+pleasantly. "Good-by," and he extended his hand, which the old merchant
+took.
+
+"Good-by, and good luck to you, John, and you might drop me a line now
+and then just to say how you get on."
+
+"I will. Good-by!"
+
+"I know you'll succeed, John. A bit of application, a bit of necessity
+to spur you on, and we'll be proud of you yet!"
+
+North laughed as he opened the door and stepped out; and Archibald
+McBride, looking through his dingy show-windows, watched him until he
+disappeared down the street; then he turned and reëntered his office.
+
+Meanwhile North hurried away with the remnant of his little fortune in
+his pocket. Five minutes' walk brought him to the building that had
+sheltered him for the last few years. He climbed the stairs and entered
+the long hail above. He paused, key in hand, before his door, when he
+heard behind him a light footfall on the uncarpeted floor and the swish
+of a woman's skirts. As he turned abruptly, the woman who had evidently
+followed him up from the street, came swiftly down the hall toward him.
+
+"Jack!" she said, when she was quite near.
+
+The short winter's day had brought an early twilight to the place, and
+the woman was closely veiled, but the moment she spoke North recognized
+her, for there was something in the mellow full-throated quality of her
+speech which belonged only to one voice that he knew.
+
+"Mrs. Langham!--Evelyn!" he exclaimed, starting back in dismay.
+
+"Hush, Jack, you needn't call it from the housetops!" As she spoke she
+swept aside her veil and he saw her face, a superlatively pretty face
+with scarlet smiling lips and dark luminous eyes that were smiling, too.
+
+"Do you want to see me, Evelyn?" he asked awkwardly.
+
+But she was neither awkward nor embarrassed; she was still smiling up
+into his face with reckless eyes and brilliant lips. She pointed to the
+door with her small gloved hand.
+
+"Open it, Jack!" she commanded.
+
+For a moment he hesitated. She was the one person he did not wish to
+see, least of all did he wish to see her there. She was not nicely
+discreet, as he well knew. She did many things that were not wise, that
+were, indeed, frankly imprudent. But clearly they could not stand there
+in the hallway. Gilmore or some of Gilmore's friends might come up the
+stairs at any moment. Langham himself might be of these.
+
+Something of all this passed through North's mind as he stood there
+hesitating. Then he unlocked the door, and standing aside, motioned her
+to precede him into the room.
+
+This room, the largest of several, he occupied, was his parlor. On
+entering it he closed the door after him, and drew forward a chair for
+Evelyn, but he did not himself sit down, nor did he remove his overcoat.
+
+He had known Evelyn all his life, they had played together as children;
+more than this, though now he would have been quite willing to forget
+the whole episode and even more than willing that she should forget it,
+there had been a time when he had moped in wretched melancholy because
+of what he had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this
+he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a
+fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a
+thing her heartlessness had seemed.
+
+When they met again he had found her more alluring than ever, but more
+devoted to her pleasures also; and then Marshall Langham had come into
+her life. North had divined that the course of their love-making was far
+from smooth, for Langham's temper was high and his will arbitrary, nor
+was he one to bear meekly the crosses she laid on him, crosses which
+other men had borne in smiling uncomplaint, reasoning no doubt, that it
+was unwise to take her favors too seriously; that as they were easily
+achieved they were quite as easily forfeited. But Langham was not like
+the other men with whom she had amused herself. He was not only older
+and more brilliant, but was giving every indication that his
+professional success would be solid and substantial. Evelyn's father had
+championed his cause, and in the end she had married him.
+
+In the five years that had elapsed since then, her romance had taken its
+place with the accepted things of life, and she revenged herself on
+Langham, for what she had come to consider his unreasonable exactions,
+by her recklessness, by her thirst for pleasure, and above all by her
+extravagance.
+
+Through all the vicissitudes of her married life, the smallest part of
+which he only guessed, North had seen much of Evelyn. There was a daring
+dangerous recklessness in her mood that he had sensed and understood and
+to which he had made quick response. He knew that she was none too happy
+with Langham, and although he had been conscious of no wish to wrong the
+husband he had never paused to consider the outcome of his intimacy with
+the wife.
+
+Evelyn was the first to break the silence.
+
+"You wonder why I came here, don't you, Jack?" she said.
+
+"You should never have done it!" he replied quickly.
+
+"What about my letters, why didn't you answer them?" she demanded. "I
+hadn't one word from you in weeks. It quite spoiled my trip East. What
+was I to think? And then you sent me just a line saying you were leaving
+Mount Hope--" she drew in her breath sharply. There was a brief silence.
+"Why?" she asked at length.
+
+"It is better that I should," he answered awkwardly.
+
+He felt a sudden remorseful tenderness for her; he wished that she might
+have divined the change that had come over him; even how worthless a
+thing his devotion had been, the utter selfishness of it.
+
+"Why is it better?" she asked. He was near enough for her to put out a
+small hand and rest it on his arm. "Jack, have I done anything to make
+you hate me? Don't you care any longer for me?"
+
+"I care a great deal, Evelyn. I want you to think the best of me."
+
+"But why do you go? And when do you think of going, Jack?" The hand that
+she had rested there a moment before, left his arm and dropped at her
+side.
+
+"I don't know yet, my plans are very uncertain. I am quite at the end of
+my money. I have been a good deal of a fool, Evelyn."
+
+Something in his manner restrained her, she was not so sure as she had
+been of her hold on him. She looked up appealingly into his face, the
+smile had left her lips and her eyes were sad, but he mistrusted the
+genuineness of this swift change of mood, certainly its permanence.
+
+"What will there be left for me, Jack, when you go? I thought--I
+thought--" her full lips quivered.
+
+She was realizing that this separation which her imagination had already
+invested with a tragic significance, meant much less to him than she
+believed it would mean to her; more than this, the cruel suspicion was
+certifying itself that in her absence from Mount Hope, North had
+undergone some strange transformation; was no longer the reckless,
+dissipated, young fellow who for months had been as her very shadow.
+
+"I am going to-night, Evelyn," he said with sudden determination.
+
+She gave a half smothered cry.
+
+"To-night! To-night!" she repeated.
+
+He changed his position uncomfortably.
+
+"I am at the end of my string, Evelyn," he said slowly.
+
+"I--I shall miss you dreadfully, Jack! You know I am frightfully
+unhappy; what will it be when you go? Marsh has made a perfect wreck of
+my life!"
+
+"Nonsense, Evelyn!" he replied bruskly. "You must be careful what you
+say to me!"
+
+"I haven't been careful before!" she asserted.
+
+He bit his lips. She went swiftly on.
+
+"I have told you everything! I don't care what happens to me--you know I
+don't, Jack! I am deadly desperately tired!" She paused, then she cried
+vehemently. "One endures a situation as long as one can, but there comes
+a time when it is impossible to go on with the falsehood any longer, and
+I have reached that time! It is my life, my happiness that are at
+stake!"
+
+"Sometimes it is better to do without happiness," he philosophized.
+
+"That is silly, Jack, no one believes that sort of thing any more; but
+it is good to teach to women and children, it saves a lot of bother, I
+suppose. But men take their happiness regardless of the rights of
+others!"
+
+"Not always," he said.
+
+"Yes, always!" she insisted.
+
+"But you knew what Marsh was before you married him."
+
+"It's a woman's vanity to believe she can reform, can control a man."
+She glanced at him furtively. What had happened to change him? Always
+until now he had responded to the recklessness of her mood, he had
+seemed to understand her without the need of words. Her brows met in an
+angry frown. Was he a coward? Did he fear Marshall Langham? Once more
+she rested her hand on his arm. "Jack, dear Jack, are _you_ going to
+fail me, too?"
+
+"What would you have me say or do, Evelyn?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+She regarded him sadly.
+
+"What has made you change, Jack? What is it; what have I done? Why did
+you not answer my letters? Why did you not come to see me?"
+
+"I only learned that you were in town this afternoon," he said.
+
+"Yes, but you had no intention of coming, I know you hadn't! You would
+have left Mount Hope without even a good-by to me!"
+
+"It is hard enough to have to go, Evelyn!"
+
+"It isn't that, Jack. What have I done? How have I displeased you?"
+
+"You haven't displeased me, Evelyn," he faltered.
+
+"Then why have you treated me as you have?"
+
+"I thought it would be easier," he said.
+
+"Have you forgotten what friends we were once?" she asked softly. "You
+always helped me out of my difficulties then, and you told me once that
+you cared--a great deal for me, more than you should ever care for any
+woman!"
+
+"Yes," he answered shortly, and was silent.
+
+He would scarcely have admitted to himself how foolish his early passion
+had been, for it was at least sincere and there could have been no
+sacrifice, at one time, that he would not have willingly made for her
+sake. His later sentiment for her had been a disgracing and a
+disgraceful thing, and he was glad to think of this boyish love, since
+it carried him back to a time before he had wrought only misery for
+himself. She misunderstood his reticence, she could not realize that she
+had lost the power that had once been hers.
+
+"What a mistake I made, Jack!" she cried, and stretched out her hands
+toward him.
+
+He fell back a step.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said. He glanced sharply at her.
+
+"How stupid you are!" she exclaimed.
+
+She half rose from her chair with her hands still extended toward him.
+For a moment he met her glance, and then, disgusted and ashamed,
+withdrew his eyes from hers.
+
+Evelyn sank back in her chair, and her face turned white and she covered
+it with her hands. North was the first to break the silence.
+
+"We would both of us better forget this," he said quietly.
+
+She rose and stood at his side. The color had returned to her cheeks.
+
+"What a fool you are, John North!" she jeered softly. "And I might have
+made the tragic mistake of really caring for you!" She gave a little
+shiver of dismay, and then after a moment's tense silence: "What a boy
+you are,--almost as much of a boy as when we used to play together."
+
+"I think there is nothing more to say, Evelyn," North said shortly. "It
+is growing late. You must not be seen leaving here!"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Oh, it would take a great deal to compromise me; though if Marsh ever
+finds out that I have been here he'll be ready to kill me!" But she
+still lingered, still seemed to invite.
+
+North was silent.
+
+"You must be in love, Jack! You see, I'll not grant that you are the
+saint you'd have me think you! Yes, you are in love!" for he colored
+angrily at her words. "Is it--"
+
+He interrupted her harshly.
+
+"Don't speak her name!"
+
+"Then it is true! I'd heard that you were, but I did not believe it!
+Yes, you are right, we must forget that I came here to-day."
+
+While she was speaking she had moved toward the door, and instinctively
+he had stepped past her to open it. When he turned with his hand on the
+knob, it brought them again face to face. The smile had left her lips,
+they were mere delicate lines of color. She raised herself on tiptoe and
+her face, gray-white, was very close to his.
+
+"What a fool you are, Jack, what a coward you must be!" and she struck
+him on the cheek with her gloved hand. "You _are_ a coward!" she cried.
+
+His face grew as white as her own, and he did not trust himself to
+speak. She gave him a last contemptuous glance and drew her veil.
+
+"Now open the door," she said insolently.
+
+He did so, and she brushed past him swiftly and stepped out into the
+long hall. For a moment North stood staring after her, and then he
+closed the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
+
+
+When North quitted Marshall Langham's office, Gilmore, after a brief
+instant of irresolution, stepped into the room. He was crudely,
+handsome, a powerfully-built man of about Langham's own age,
+swarthy-faced and with ruthless lips showing red under a black waxed
+mustache. His hat was inclined at a "sporty" angle and the cigar which
+he held firmly between his strong even teeth was tilted in the same
+direction, imparting a rakish touch to Mr. Gilmore's otherwise sturdy
+and aggressive presence.
+
+"Howdy, Marsh!" said his new-comer easily.
+
+From his seat before his desk Langham scowled across at him.
+
+"What the devil brings you here, Andy?" he asked, ungraciously enough.
+
+Gilmore buried his hands deep in his trousers pockets and with one eye
+half closed surveyed the lawyer over the tip of his tilted cigar.
+
+"You're a civil cuss, Marsh," he said lightly, "but one wouldn't always
+know it. Ain't I a client, ain't I a friend,--and damn it all, man,
+ain't I a creditor? There are three excuses, any one of which is:
+sufficient to bring me into your esteemed presence!"
+
+"We may as well omit the first," growled Langham, wheeling his chair
+back from the desk and facing Gilmore.
+
+"Why?" asked Gilmore, lazily tolerant of the other's mood.
+
+"Because there is nothing more that I can do for you," said Langham
+shortly.
+
+"Oh, yes there is, Marsh, there's a whole lot more you can do for me.
+There's Moxlow, the distinguished prosecuting attorney; without you to
+talk sense to him he's liable to listen to all sorts of queer people who
+take more interest in my affairs than is good for them; but as long as
+he's got you at his elbow he won't forget my little stake in his
+election."
+
+"If you wish him not to forget it, you'd better not be so particular in
+reminding him of it; he'll get sick of you and your concerns!" retorted
+Langham.
+
+Gilmore laughed.
+
+"I ain't going to remind him of it; what have I got you for, Marsh? It's
+your job." He took a step nearer Langham while his black brows met in a
+sullen frown. "I know I ain't popular here in Mount Hope, I know there
+are plenty of people who'd like to see me run out of town; but I'm no
+quitter, they'll find. It suits me to stay here, and they can't touch me
+if Moxlow won't have it. That's your job, that's what I hire you for,
+Marsh; you're Moxlow's partner, you're your father's son, it's up to
+you to see I ain't interfered with. Don't tell me you can't do anything
+more for me. I won't have it!"
+
+Langham's face was red, and his eyes blazed angrily, but Gilmore met his
+glance with a look of stern insistence that could not be misunderstood.
+
+"I have done what I could for you," the lawyer said at last, choking
+down his rage.
+
+"Oh, go to hell! You know you haven't hurt yourself," said Gilmore
+insolently.
+
+"Well, then, why do you come here?" demanded Langham.
+
+"Same old business, Marsh." He lounged across the room and dropped,
+yawning, into a chair near the window.
+
+There was silence between them for a little space. Langham fussed with
+the papers on his desk, while Gilmore squinted at him over the end of
+his cigar.
+
+"Same old business, Marsh!" Gilmore repeated lazily. "What's the enemy
+up to, anyhow? Are the good people of Mount Hope worrying Moxlow? Is
+their sleepless activity going to interfere with my sleepless
+profession, eh? Can you answer me that?"
+
+"Moxlow has cut the office of late," said Langham briefly.
+
+"He's happened on a good thing in the prosecuting attorney's office, I
+suppose? It's a pity you didn't strike out for that, Marsh; you'd have
+been of some use to your friends if you'd got the job."
+
+"Not necessarily," said Langham.
+
+"Well, when's Moxlow going after me?" inquired Gilmore.
+
+"I, haven't heard him say. He told me he had sufficient evidence for
+your indictment."
+
+"Yes, of course," agreed Gilmore placidly.
+
+"I guess yours is a case for the next grand jury!"
+
+"So Moxlow's in earnest about wishing to make trouble for me?" said
+Gilmore, still placidly.
+
+"Oh, he's in earnest, all right." Langham shrugged his shoulders
+petulantly. "He'll go after you, and perhaps by the time he's done with
+you you'll wish you'd taken my advice and made yourself scarce!"
+
+"I'm no quitter!" rejoined Gilmore, chewing thoughtfully at the end of
+his cigar.
+
+"By all means stay in Mount Hope if you think it's worth your while,"
+said Langham indifferently.
+
+"Can you give me some definite idea as to when the fun begins?"
+
+"No, but it will be soon enough, Andy. He wants the support of the best
+element. He can't afford to offend it."
+
+"And he knows you are my lawyer?" asked Gilmore still thoughtfully.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Ain't that going to cut any figure with him?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Is that so, Marsh?" He crossed his legs and nursed an ankle with both
+hands. "Well, somebody ought to lose Moxlow,--take him out and forget to
+find him again. He's much too good for this world; it ain't natural.
+He's about the only man of his age in Mount Hope who ain't drifted into
+my rooms at one time or another." He paused and took the cigar from
+between his teeth. "You call him off, Marsh, make him agree to let me
+alone; ain't there such a thing as friendship in this profession of
+yours?"
+
+Langham shook his head, and again Gilmore's black brows met in a frown.
+He made a contemptuous gesture.
+
+"You're a hell of a lawyer!" he sneered.
+
+"Be careful what you say to me!" cried Langham, suddenly giving way to
+the feeling of rage that until now he had held in check.
+
+"Oh, I'm careful enough. I guess if you stop to think a minute you'll
+understand you got to take what I choose to say as I choose to say it!"
+
+Langham sprang to his feet shaking with anger.
+
+"No, by--" he began hoarsely.
+
+"Sit down," said Gilmore coldly. "You can't afford to row with me;
+anyhow, I ain't going to row with you. I'll tell you what I think of you
+and what I expect of you, so sit down!"
+
+There was a long pause. Gilmore gazed out the window. He seemed to watch
+the hurrying snowflakes with no interest in Langham who was still
+standing by his desk, with one shaking hand resting on the back of his
+chair. Presently the lawyer resumed his seat and Gilmore turned toward
+him.
+
+"Don't talk about my quitting here, Marsh," he said menacingly. "That's
+the kind of legal advice I won't have from you or any one else."
+
+"You may as well make up your mind first as last to it," said Langham,
+not regarding what Gilmore had just said. "I can't keep Moxlow quiet any
+longer; the sentiment of the community is against gamblers. If you are
+not a gambler, what are you?"
+
+"You mean you are going to throw me over, you two?"
+
+"With Moxlow it is a case of bread and butter; personally I don't care
+whom you fleece, but I've got my living to make here in Mount Hope, too,
+and I can't afford to go counter to public opinion."
+
+"You have had some favors out of me, Marsh."
+
+"I am not likely to forget them, you give me no chance," rejoined
+Langham bitterly.
+
+"Why should I, eh?" asked Gilmore coolly. He leaned back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling above his head. "Marsh, what was that North
+was saying about me when I came down the hall?" and his swarthy cheeks
+were tinged with red.
+
+"I don't recall that he was speaking of you."
+
+"You don't? Well, think again. It was about our going up to your house
+to-night, wasn't it? Your wife's back, eh? Well, don't worry, I came
+here partly to tell you that I had made other arrangements for the
+evening."
+
+"It's just as well," said Langham.
+
+"Do you mean your wife wouldn't receive me?" demanded Gilmore. There
+was a catch in his voice and a pallor in his face.
+
+"I didn't say that."
+
+Gilmore's chair resounded noisily on the floor as he came to his feet.
+He strode to the lawyer's side.
+
+"Then what in hell _do_ you say?" he stormed.
+
+In spite of himself Langham quailed before the gambler's fury.
+
+"Oh, keep still, Andy! What a nasty-tempered beast you are!" he said
+pacifically.
+
+There was a pause, and Gilmore resumed his chair, turning to the window
+to hide his emotion; then slowly his scowling glance came back to
+Langham.
+
+"He said I was a common card-sharp, eh?" Langham knew that he spoke of
+North. "Damn him! What does he call himself?" He threw the stub of his
+cigar from him across the room. "Marsh, what does your wife know about
+me?" And again there was the catch to his voice.
+
+Langham looked at him in astonishment.
+
+"Know about you--my wife--nothing," he said slowly.
+
+"I suppose she's heard my name?" inquired the gambler.
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"Thinks I rob you at cards, eh?" But Langham made no answer to this.
+"Thinks I take your money away from you," continued the gambler. "And
+it's your game to let her think that! I wonder what she'd think if she
+knew the account stood the other way about? I've been a handy sort of a
+friend, haven't I, Marsh? The sort you could use,--and you have used me
+up to the limit! I've been good enough to borrow money from, but not
+good enough to take home--"
+
+"Oh, come, Andy, what's the use," placated Langham. "I'm sorry if your
+feelings are hurt."
+
+"It's time you and I had a settlement, Marsh. I want you to take up
+those notes of yours."
+
+"I haven't the money!" said Langham.
+
+"Well, I can't wait on you any longer."
+
+"I don't see but that you'll have to," retorted Langham.
+
+"I'm going to offer a few inducements for haste, Marsh. I'm going to
+make you see that it's worth your while to find that money for me
+quick,--understand? You owe me about two thousand dollars; are you fixed
+to turn it in by the end of the month?"
+
+The gambler bit off the end of a fresh cigar and held it a moment
+between his fingers as he gazed at Langham, waiting for his reply. The
+latter shook his head but said nothing.
+
+"Well, then, by George, I am going to sue you!"
+
+"Because I can't protect you longer!"
+
+"Oh, to hell with your protection! Go dig up the money for me or I'll
+raise a fuss here that'll hurt more than one reputation! The notes are
+good, ain't they?"
+
+"They are good when I have the money to meet them."
+
+"They are good even if you haven't the money to meet them! I guess Judge
+Langham's indorsement is worth something, and Linscott's a rich man;
+even Moxlow's got some property. Those are the three who are on your
+paper, and the paper's considerably overdue."
+
+Langham turned a pale face on the gambler.
+
+"You won't do that, Andy!" he said, in a voice which he vainly strove to
+hold steady.
+
+"Won't I? Do you think I'm in business for my health?" And he laughed
+shortly, then he wheeled on Langham with unexpected fierceness. "I'll
+give you until the first of the month, Marsh, and then I'm going after
+you without gloves. I don't care a damn who squares the account; your
+indorsers' cash will suit me as well as your own." He caught the
+expression on Langham's face, its deathly pallor, the hunted look in his
+eyes, and paused suddenly. The shadow of a slow smile fixed itself at
+the corners of his mouth, he put out a hand and rested it on Langham's
+shoulder. "You damn fool! Have you tried that trick on me? I'll take
+those notes to the bank in the morning and see if the signatures are
+genuine."
+
+"Do it!" Langham spoke in a whisper.
+
+"Maybe you think I won't!" sneered the gambler. "Maybe you'd rather I
+didn't, eh? It will hardly suit you to have me show those notes?"
+
+"Do what you like; whatever suggests itself to a scurvy whelp like you!"
+said Langham.
+
+Gilmore merely grinned at this.
+
+"If you are trying to encourage me to smash you, Marsh, you have got the
+right idea as to how it is to be done." But his tone was now one of lazy
+good nature.
+
+"Smash me then; I haven't the money to pay you."
+
+"Get it!" said Gilmore tersely.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"You are asking too much of me, Marsh. If I could finance you I'd cut
+out cards in the future. How about the judge,--no? Well, I just threw
+that out as a hint, but I suppose you have been there already, for
+naturally you'd compliment him by giving him the chance to pull you up
+out of your troubles. Since your own father won't help you, how about
+Linscott? Is he going to want to see his son-in-law disgraced? I guess
+he's your best chance, Marsh. Put it on strong and for once tell the
+truth. Tell him you've dabbled in forgery and that it won't work!"
+
+Langham had dropped back in his chair. He was seeking to devise some
+expedient that would meet his present difficulties. His bondage to the
+gambler had become intolerable, anything would be better than a
+continuance of that. The monstrous folly of those forgeries seemed
+beyond anything he could have perpetrated in his sober senses. He must
+have been mad! But then he had needed the money desperately.
+
+He might go to his, father, but he had been to him only recently, and
+the judge himself was burdened with debt. He might go to Mr. Linscott,
+he might even try North. He could tell the latter the whole circumstance
+and borrow a part of what was left of his small fortune; of course he
+was in his debt as it was, but North would never think of that; he was a
+man to share his last dollar with a friend.
+
+He passed a shaking hand across his eyes. On every side the nightmare of
+his obligations confronted him, for who was there that he could owe whom
+he did not already owe? He was notorious for his inability to pay his
+debts. This notoriety was hurting his professional standing, and now if
+Gilmore carried out his threat he must look forward to the shame of a
+public exposure. His very reputation for common honesty was at stake.
+
+He wondered what men did in a crisis such as this. He wondered what
+happened to them when they could do nothing more. Usually he was fertile
+in expedients, but to-day his brain seemed wholly inert. He realized
+only a certain dull terror of the future; the present eluded him
+utterly.
+
+He had never been over-scrupulous perhaps, he had always taken what he
+pleased to call long chances, and it was in almost imperceptible
+gradations that he had descended in the scale of honesty to the point
+that had at last made possible these forgeries. Until now he had always
+felt certain of himself and of his future; time was to bring him into
+the presence of his dear desires, when he should have money to lift the
+burden of debt, money to waste, money to scatter, money to spend for the
+good things of life.
+
+But he had made the fatal mistake of anticipating the success in which
+he so firmly believed. Those notes--he dashed his hand before his face;
+suddenly the air of the room seemed to stifle him, courage and cunning
+had left him; there was only North to whom he could turn for a few
+hundreds with which to quiet Gilmore. Let him but escape the
+consequences of his folly this time and he promised himself he would
+retrench; he would live within his income, he would apply himself to his
+profession as he had never yet applied himself. He scowled heavily at
+Gilmore, who met his scowl with a cynical smile.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do?" he queried.
+
+But Langham did not answer at once. He had turned and was looking from
+the window. It was snowing now very hard, and twilight, under the edges
+of torn gray clouds was creeping over the Square; he could barely see
+the flickering lights in Archibald McBride's dingy shop-windows.
+
+"Give me a chance, Andy!" he said at last appealingly.
+
+"To the end of the month, not a day more," asserted Gilmore.
+
+"Where am I to get such a sum in that time? You know I can't do it!"
+
+"Don't ask me, but turn to and get it, Marsh. That's your only hope."
+
+"By the first of the year perhaps," urged Langham.
+
+"No, get rid of the notion that I am going to let up on you, for I
+ain't! I'm going to squat on your trail until the money's in my hand;
+otherwise I know damn well I won't ever see a cent of it! I ain't your
+only creditor, but the one who hounds you hardest will see his money
+first, and I got you where I want you."
+
+"I can't raise the money; what will you gain by ruining me?" demanded
+Langham. He wished to impress this on Gilmore, and then he would propose
+as a compromise the few hundreds it would be possible to borrow from
+North.
+
+"To get square with you, Marsh, will be worth something, and frankly, I
+ain't sure that I ever expected to see any of that money, but as long as
+you stood my friend I was disposed to be easy on you."
+
+"I am still your friend."
+
+"Just about so-so, but you won't keep Moxlow--"
+
+"I can't!"
+
+"Then I can't see where your friendship comes in." Gilmore quitted his
+chair.
+
+"Wait, Andy!" said Langham hastily.
+
+"No use of any more talk, Marsh, I want my money! Go dig it up."
+
+"Suppose, by straining every nerve, I can raise five hundred dollars by
+the end of the month--"
+
+"Oh, pay your grocer with that!"
+
+Langham choked down his rage. "You haven't always been so contemptuous
+of such sums."
+
+"I'm feeling proud to-day, Marsh. I'm going to treat myself to a few
+airs, and you can pat yourself on the back when you've dug up the money
+by the end of the month! You'll have done something to feel proud of,
+too."
+
+"Suppose we say a thousand," urged Langham.
+
+"Good old Marsh! If you keep on raising yourself like this you'll soon
+get to a figure where we can talk business!" Gilmore laughed.
+
+"Perhaps I can raise a thousand dollars. I don't know why I should think
+I can, but I'm willing to try; I'm willing to say I'll try--"
+
+Gilmore shook his head.
+
+"I've told you what you got to do, Marsh, and I mean every damn word I
+say,--understand that? I'm going to have my money or I'm going to have
+the fun of smashing you."
+
+"Listen to me, Andy!" began Langham desperately.
+
+"Why take me into your confidence?" asked the gambler coldly.
+
+"What will you gain by ruining me?" repeated Langham fiercely.
+
+The gambler only grinned.
+
+"I am always willing to spend money on my pleasures; and besides when
+those notes turn up, your father or some one else will have to come
+across."
+
+Langham was silent. He was staring out across the empty snow-strewn
+Square at the lights in Archibald McBride's windows.
+
+"Remember," said Gilmore, moving toward the door. "I'll talk to you when
+you got two thousand dollars."
+
+"Damn you, where do you think I'll get it?" cried Langham.
+
+"I'm not good at guessing," laughed Gilmore.
+
+He turned without another word or look and left the room. His footsteps
+echoed loudly in the hall and on the stairs, and then there was silence
+in the building. Langham was again looking out across the Square at the
+lights in Archibald McBride's windows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+ADVENTURE IN EARNEST
+
+
+Mr. Shrimplin had made his way through a number of back streets without
+adventure of any sort, and as the night and the storm closed swiftly in
+about him, the shapes of himself, his cart and of wild Bill disappeared,
+and there remained to mark his progress only the hissing sputtering
+flame, that flared spectrally six feet in air as the little lamplighter
+drove in and out of shabby unfrequented streets and alleys.
+
+It had grown steadily colder with the approach of night, and the wind
+had risen. The streets seemed deserted, and Mr. Shrimplin being as he
+was of a somewhat fanciful turn of mind, could almost imagine himself
+and Bill the only living things astir in all the town.
+
+He reached Water Street, the western boundary of that part of Mount Hope
+known as the flats. He jogged past Maxy Schaffer's Railroad Hotel at the
+corner of Front Street, which flung the wicked radiance of its bar-room
+windows along the shining railroad track where it crossed the creek on
+the new iron bridge; and keeping on down Water Street with its smoky
+tenements, entered an outlying district where the lamps were far apart
+and where red and blue and green switch lights blinked at him out of the
+storm.
+
+It was nearly six o'clock when he at last wheeled into the Square; here
+only three gasolene burners--survivors of the old régime--held their own
+against the fast encroaching gas-lamp.
+
+He lighted the one in Division Street and was ready to turn and traverse
+the north side of the Square to the second lamp which stood a block away
+at the corner of High Street. He was drawing Bill's head about--Bill
+being smitten with a sudden desire to go directly home leaving the
+night's work unfinished--when the muffled figure of a man appeared in
+the street in front of him. The inch or more of snow that now covered
+the pavement had deadened the sound of his steps, while the eddying
+flakes had made possible his near approach unseen. As he came rapidly
+into the red glare of Mr. Shrimplin's hissing torch that hero was
+exceeding well pleased to recognize a friendly face.
+
+"How are you, Mr. North!" he said, and John North halted suddenly.
+
+"Oh, it's you, Shrimp! A nasty night, isn't it?"
+
+"It's the suffering human limit!" rejoined Mr. Shrimplin with feeling.
+
+As he spoke the town bell rang the hour; unconsciously, perhaps, the two
+men paused until the last reverberating stroke had spent itself in the
+snowy distance.
+
+"Six o'clock," observed Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"Good night, Shrimp," replied North irrelevantly.
+
+He turned away and an instant later was engulfed in the wintry night.
+
+Having at last pointed Bill's head in the right direction Mr. Shrimplin
+drove that trusty beast up to the lamp-post on the corner of High
+Street, when suddenly and for no apparent reason Bill settled back in
+the shafts and exhibited unmistakable, though humiliating symptoms of
+fright.
+
+"Go on, you!" cried Mr. Shrimplin, slapping bravely with both the lines,
+but his voice was far from steady, for suppose Bill should abandon the
+rectitude of a lifetime and begin to kick.
+
+"Go on, you!" repeated Mr. Shrimplin and slapped the lines again, but
+less vigorously, for by this time Bill was unquestionably backing away
+from the curb.
+
+"Be done! Be done!" expostulated Mr. Shrimplin, but he gave over
+slapping the lines, for why irritate Bill in his present uncertain mood?
+"Want I should get out and lead you?" asked Mr. Shrimplin, putting aside
+with one hand the blankets in which he was wrapped. "You're a game old
+codger, ain't you? I guess you ain't aware you've growed up!"
+
+While he was still speaking he slipped to the ground and worked his way
+hand over hand up the lines to Bill's bit. Bill was now comfortably
+located on his haunches, but evidently still dissatisfied for he
+continued to back vigorously, drawing the protesting little lamplighter
+after him. When he had put perhaps twenty feet between himself and the
+lamp-post Bill achieved his usual upright attitude and his countenance
+assumed its habitual contemplative expression, the haunted look faded
+from his sagacious eye and his flaming nostrils resumed their normal
+benevolent expression. Taking note of these swift changes, it occurred
+to Mr. Shrimplin that rather than risk a repetition of his recent
+experience he would so far sacrifice his official dignity as to go on
+foot to the lamp-post. Bill would probably stand where he was,
+indefinitely, standing being one of his most valued accomplishments. The
+lamplighter took up his torch which he had put aside in the struggle
+with Bill and walked to the curb.
+
+And here Mr. Shrimplin noticed that which had not before caught his
+attention. McBride's store was apparently open, for the bracketed oil
+lamps that hung at regular intervals the full length of the long narrow
+room, were all alight.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin, whose moods were likely to be critical and censorious,
+realized that there was something personally offensive in the fact that
+Archibald McBride had chosen to disregard a holiday which his
+fellow-merchants had so very generally observed.
+
+"And him, I may say, just rotten rich!" he thought.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin further discovered that though the lamps were lit they
+were burning low, and he concluded that they had been lighted in the
+early dusk of the winter afternoon and that McBride, for reasons of
+economy, had deferred turning them up until it should be quite dark.
+
+"Well, I'm a poor man, but I couldn't think of them things like he
+does!" reflected Mr. Shrimplin; and then even before he had ceased to
+pride himself on his superior liberality, he made still another
+discovery, and this, that the store door stood wide open to the night.
+
+"Well," thought Mr. Shrimplin, "maybe he's saving oil, but he's wasting
+fuel."
+
+Approaching the door he peered in. The store was empty, Archibald
+McBride was nowhere visible. Evidently the door had been open some
+little time, for he could see where the snow, driven by the strong wind,
+had formed a miniature snow-drift just beyond the threshold.
+
+"Either he's stepped out and the door's blowed open," muttered Mr.
+Shrimplin, "or he's in his back office and some customer went out
+without latching it."
+
+He paused irresolutely, then he put his hand on the knob of the door to
+close it, and paused again. With his taste for fictitious horrors,
+usually indulged in, however, by his own warm fireside, he found the
+present time and place slightly disquieting; and then Bill's singular
+and erratic behavior had rather weakened his nerve. From under knitted
+brows he gazed into the room. The storm rattled the shuttered windows
+above his head, the dingy sign creaked on its rusty fastenings, and with
+each fresh gust the bracketed lamps rocked gently to and fro, and as
+they rocked their trembling shadows slid back and forth along the walls.
+The very air of the place was inhospitable, forbidding, and Mr.
+Shrimplin was strongly inclined to close the door and beat a hasty
+retreat.
+
+Still peering down the narrow room with its sagging shelves and littered
+counters, he crossed the threshold. Now he could see the office, a space
+partitioned off at the rear of the building and having a glass front
+that gave into the store itself. Here, as he knew, stood Mr. McBride's
+big iron safe, and here was the high desk, his heavy ledgers--row after
+row of them; these histories of commerce covered almost the entire
+period during which men had bought and sold in Mount Hope.
+
+A faint light burned beyond the dirty glass partition, but the tall
+meager form of the old merchant was nowhere visible. Mr. Shrimplin
+advanced yet farther into the room and urged by his sense of duty and
+his public spirit, he directed his steps toward the office, treading
+softly as one who fears to come upon the unexpected. Once he paused, and
+addressing the empty air, broke the heavy silence:
+
+"Oh, Mr. McBride, your door's open!"
+
+The room echoed to his words.
+
+"Well," carped Mr. Shrimplin, "I don't see as it's any of my business
+to attend to his business!" But the very sound of his voice must have
+given him courage, for now he stepped forward, briskly.
+
+On his right was a show-case in which was displayed a varied assortment
+of knives, cutlery, and revolvers with shiny silver or nickel mountings;
+then the show-case gave place to a long pine counter, and at the far end
+of this was a pair of scales. Near the scales on a low iron standard
+rested an oil lamp, but this lamp was not lighted nor were the lamps in
+the bracket that hung immediately above the scales, for behind the
+counter at this point was a door, the upper half glass, that opened on a
+small yard which, in turn, was inclosed by a series of low sheds where
+the old merchant stored heavy castings, bar-iron, and the like. Mr.
+Shrimplin was shrewdly aware that it was one of McBride's small
+economies not to light the lamps by that door so long as he could see to
+read the figures on the scales without their artificial aid.
+
+And then Mr. Shrimplin saw a thing that sent the blood leaping from his
+heart, while an icy hand seemed to hold him where he stood. On the floor
+at his very feet was a strange huddled shape. He lowered his gasolene
+torch which he still carried, and the shape resolved itself into the
+figure of a man; an old man who lay face down on the floor, his arms
+extended as if they had been arrested while he was in the very act of
+raising them to his head. The thick shock of snow-white hair, worn
+rather long, was discolored just back of the left ear, and from this
+Mr. Shrimplin's horrified gaze was able to trace another discoloration
+that crossed in a thin red line the dead man's white collar; for the man
+was dead past all peradventure.
+
+[Illustration: On the floor at his feet was a strange huddled shape.]
+
+Mr. Shrimplin saw and grasped the meaning of it all in an instant. Then
+with a feeble cry he turned and fled down the long room, pursued by a
+million phantom terrors. His heart seemed to die within him as he
+scurried down that long room; then, mercifully, the keen fresh air
+filled his lungs. He fairly leaped through the open door, and again the
+storm roared about him with a kind of boisterous fellowship. It smote
+him in the face and twisted his shaking legs from under him. Then he
+fell, speechless, terrified, into the arms of a passer-by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+COLONEL GEORGE HARBISON
+
+
+Terror-stricken as he was, Mr. Shrimplin recognized the man into whose
+arms he had fallen. There was no mistaking the nose, thin and aquiline,
+the bristling mustache and white imperial, the soft gray slouch hat, or
+the military cloak that half concealed the stalwart form of its wearer.
+
+Colonel George Harbison, much astonished and in utter ignorance of the
+cause of Mr. Shrimplin's alarm, took that gentleman by the collar and
+deftly jerked him into an erect posture.
+
+"My dear sir!" the colonel began in a tone of mild expostulation,
+evidently thinking he had a drunken man to deal with. "My dear sir, do
+be more careful--" then he recognized the lamplighter. "Well, upon my
+word, Shrimp, what's gone wrong with you?" he demanded, with military
+asperity.
+
+"My God, Colonel, if he ain't lying there dead--" a shudder passed
+through the little man; he was well-nigh dumb in his terror. "And I
+stumbled right on to him there on the floor!" he cried with a gasp.
+
+He collapsed again, and again the colonel, whose gloved hand still
+retained its hold on his collar, set him on his trembling legs with
+admirable expertness.
+
+"I tell you he's dead!" cried Mr. Shrimplin, lost to everything but that
+one dreadful fact.
+
+"Who's dead?" demanded the colonel. "Stand up, man, don't fall about
+like that or you may do yourself some injury!" for Mr. Shrimplin seemed
+about to collapse once more.
+
+"Old man McBride, Colonel--if he ain't dead I wish I may never see
+death!"
+
+"Dead!" cried the colonel. "Archibald McBride dead!" He released his
+hold on Mr. Shrimplin and took a step toward the door; Shrimplin,
+however, detained him with a shaking hand, though he was calmer now.
+
+"Colonel, you'd better be careful, he's lying there in a pool of blood;
+some one's killed him for his money! How do we know the murderer ain't
+there!" This conjecture was made to the empty street, for Colonel
+Harbison had entered the store.
+
+"Why does he want to leave me like that!" wailed Shrimplin, and his
+panic threatened a return.
+
+He dragged himself to the door. Here he paused, since he could not bring
+himself to enter, for before his eyes was the ghastly vision of that old
+man huddled on the blood-stained floor. He heard the colonel's steps
+echo down the long room, and when their sound ceased he knew he was
+standing beside the dead man. After what seemed an age of waiting the
+steps sounded again, and a moment later the colonel's tall form filled
+the doorway.
+
+"Andy!" said the colonel.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin turned with a start. At his back within reach of his hand
+stood Andy Gilmore. He had been utterly unaware of the gambler's
+approach, but now conscious of it he dropped in a miserable heap on the
+door-sill, while the white and unfamiliar world reeled before his
+bleached blue eyes; it was the very drunkenness of fear.
+
+"Howdy, Colonel," said the gambler, as he gave Harbison a half-military
+salute.
+
+He admired the colonel, who had once threatened to horsewhip him if he
+ever permitted his nephew, Watt, to enter his rooms.
+
+"Come here, Andy!" ordered the colonel briefly.
+
+"God's sake, Colonel!" gasped the wretched little lamplighter,
+struggling to his feet, "don't leave me here--"
+
+"What's wrong, Colonel?" asked Gilmore.
+
+"Archibald McBride's been murdered!"
+
+Mr. Gilmore took the butt of the half-smoked cigar from between his
+teeth, tossed it into the gutter, and pushing past Mr. Shrimplin entered
+the room.
+
+Colonel Harbison, a step or two in advance of his companion, led the way
+to the rear of the store. The colonel paused, and Gilmore gained a place
+at his elbow.
+
+"You are sure he's dead?" questioned the gambler.
+
+Kneeling beside the crumpled figure Gilmore slipped his hand in between
+the body and the floor; his manner was cool and businesslike. After a
+moment he withdrew his hand and looked, up into the colonel's face.
+
+"Well?" asked the colonel.
+
+"Oh, he's dead, all right!" Gilmore glanced about him, and the colonel's
+eyes following, they both discovered that the door leading into the side
+yard was partly open.
+
+"He went that way, eh, Colonel?"
+
+"It's altogether likely," agreed the veteran.
+
+"It's a nasty business!" said Gilmore reflectively.
+
+"Shocking!" snapped the colonel.
+
+"He took big chances," commented the gambler, "living the way he did."
+He spoke of the dead man.
+
+"Poor old man!" said the colonel pityingly.
+
+What had it all amounted to, those chances for the sake of gain, which
+Gilmore had in mind.
+
+"He can't have been dead very long," said Gilmore. "Did _you_ find him,
+Colonel?" he asked as he stood erect.
+
+"No, Shrimplin found him."
+
+Again the two men looked about them. On the floor by the counter at
+their right was a heavy sledge. Gilmore called Harbison's attention to
+this.
+
+"I guess the job was done with that," he said.
+
+"Possibly," agreed Harbison.
+
+Gilmore picked up the sledge and examined it narrowly.
+
+"Yes, you can see, there is blood on it." He handed it to Harbison, who
+stepped under the nearest lamp with the clumsy weapon in his hand.
+
+"You are right, Andy!" and he glanced at the rude instrument of death
+with a look of repugnance on his keen sensitive face, then he carefully,
+placed it under the wooden counter. "Horrible!" he muttered to himself.
+
+"It was no joke for him!" said the gambler, catching the last word. "But
+some one was bound to try this dodge sooner or later. Why, as far back
+as I can remember, people said he kept his money hidden away at the
+bottom of nail kegs and under heaps of scrap-iron." He took a cigar from
+his pocket, bit off the end, and struck a match. "Well, I wouldn't want
+to be the other fellow, Colonel; I'd be in all kinds of a panic; it
+takes nerve for a job like this."
+
+"It's a shocking circumstance," said the colonel.
+
+"I wonder if it paid!" speculated the gambler. "And I wonder who'll get
+what he leaves. Has he any family or relatives?"
+
+"No, not so far as any one knows. He came here many years ago, a
+close-mouthed Scotchman, who never had any intimates, never married, and
+never spoke of his private affairs."
+
+There was a slight commotion at the door. They could hear Shrimplin's
+agitated voice, and a moment later two men, chance passers-by with whom
+he had been speaking, shook themselves free of the little lamplighter
+and entered the room. The new-comers nodded to the colonel and Gilmore
+as they paused to stare mutely at the body on the floor.
+
+"He bled like a stuck pig!" said one of the men at last. He was a
+ragged slouching creature with a splotched and bloated face half hidden
+by a bristling red beard. He glanced at Gilmore for an uncertain instant
+out of a pair of small shifty eyes. "It's murder, ain't it, boss?" he
+added.
+
+"No doubt about that, Joe!" rejoined the gambler.
+
+"I suppose it was robbery?" said the other man, who had not spoken
+before.
+
+"Very likely," answered the colonel. "We have not examined the place,
+however; we shall wait for the proper officials."
+
+"Who do you want, Colonel?"
+
+"Coroner Taylor, and I suppose the sheriff," replied Harbison.
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"All right, I'll bring them; and say, what about the prosecuting
+attorney?" as he turned to leave.
+
+"Yes, bring Moxlow, too, if you can find him."
+
+The man hurried from the room. Gilmore leaned against the counter and
+smoked imperturbably. Joe Montgomery, with his great slouching shoulders
+arched, and his grimy hands buried deep in his trousers pockets, stared
+at the dead man in stolid wonder. Colonel Harbison's glance sought the
+same object but with a sensitive shrinking as from an ugly brutal thing.
+A clock ticked loudly in the office; there was the occasional fall of
+cinders from the grate of the rusted stove that heated the place; these
+were sounds that neither Gilmore nor the colonel had heard before.
+Presently a lean black cat stole from the office and sprang upon the
+counter; it purred softly.
+
+"Hello, puss!" said the gambler, putting out a hand. The cat stole
+closer. "I guess I'll have to take you home with me, eh? This ain't a
+place for unprotected females!" The cat crept back and forth under his
+caressing touch.
+
+At the street-door Shrimplin appeared and disappeared, now his head was
+thrust into the room, and now his nose was flattened against the dingy
+show-windows; from neither point could he quite command the view he
+desired nor could he bring himself to enter the building; then he
+vanished entirely, but after a brief interval they heard his voice. He
+was evidently speaking with some one in the street. A little crowd was
+rapidly gathering about him, but it disintegrated almost immediately,
+his listeners abandoning him to hurry into the store.
+
+"You must stand back, all of you!" said the colonel. "Unless you are
+very careful you may destroy important evidence!"
+
+The crowd assembled itself silently for the most part; here and there a
+man removed his hat, or made some whispered comment, or asked some eager
+low-voiced question of Gilmore or the colonel. Men stood on boxes, on
+nail kegs, and on counters. Except for the little circle left about the
+dead man on the floor, every vantage point of observation was soon
+occupied. It was scarcely half an hour since Shrimplin had fallen
+speechless into Colonel Harbison's arms, yet fully two hundred men had
+gathered in that long room or were struggling about the door to gain
+admittance to it.
+
+At a suggestion from Harbison, the gambler, followed by Joe, elbowed his
+way to the front door, which in spite of the protest of those outside,
+he closed and locked. A moment later, however, he opened it to admit
+Doctor Taylor, the coroner, and Conklin, the sheriff. The latter
+instantly set about clearing the room.
+
+Gilmore and the colonel remained with the officials and during the
+succeeding ten minutes the gambler, who had kept his post at the door,
+opened, it to Moxlow, young Watt Harbison and two policemen.
+
+As the coroner finished his examination of the body, the sound of wheels
+was heard in the Square and an undertaker's wagon drew up to the door.
+The murdered man was placed on a stretcher and covered with a black
+cloth, then four men raised the stretcher and for the last time the old
+merchant passed out under his creaking sign into the night.
+
+"I've agreed to watch at the house, Andy," said Colonel Harbison. "I
+want you and Watt to come with me."
+
+The gambler lighted a fresh cigar and the three men left the store.
+
+On the Square groups of men discussed the murder. Though none was
+permitted to enter the store, the windows afforded occasional glimpses
+of the little group of officials within, until a policeman closed and
+fastened the heavy wooden shutters. Then the crowd slowly and
+reluctantly dispersed.
+
+Meanwhile the town marshal, under cover of the excitement, had descended
+on the gas house where tramps congregated of winter nights for warmth
+and shelter. Here he found shivering over a can of beer, two homeless
+wretches, whom he arrested as suspicious characters. After this,
+official activity languished, for the official mind could think of
+nothing more to do.
+
+With the scattering of the crowd on the Square, Shrimplin climbed into
+his cart and drove off home. The smother of wind-driven snow still
+enveloped the, town, the very air seemed charged with mystery and
+horror, and before the little lamplighter's eyes was ever the haunting
+vision of the murdered man.
+
+He drove into the alley back of his house, unhitched Bill and led him
+into the barn. His torch made the gloom of the place more terrifying
+than utter darkness would have been. Suppose the murderer should be
+hiding there! Mr. Shrimplin's mind fastened on the hay-mow as the most
+likely place of concealment, and the cold sweat ran from him in icy
+streams; he could, almost see the murderer's evil eyes fixed upon him
+from the blackness above. But at last Bill was stripped of his harness,
+and the little lamplighter, escaping from the barn with its fancied
+terrors, hurried across his small back yard to his kitchen door.
+
+"Well!" said Mrs. Shrimplin, as he entered the room. "I was beginning to
+wonder if you'd ever think it worth your while to come home!"
+
+"What's the bell been ringing for?" asked Custer. Mrs. Shrimplin was
+seated by the table, which was littered with her sewing; Custer occupied
+his usual chair by the stove, and it was evident that they knew nothing
+of the tragedy in which Mr. Shrimplin had played so important, and as he
+now felt, so worthy a part.
+
+"I suppose I've been out quite a time, and I may say I've seen times,
+too! I guess there ain't no one in the town fitter to say they seen
+times than just me!"
+
+The light and comfort of his own pleasant kitchen had quite restored Mr.
+Shrimplin.
+
+"I may say I seen times!" he repeated significantly. "There's something
+doing in this here old town after all! I take back a heap of the hard
+things I've said about it; a feller can scare up a little excitement if
+he knows where to look for it. I ain't bragging none, but I guess you'll
+hear my name mentioned--I guess you'll even see it in print in the
+newspapers!" He warmed his cold hands over the stove. "Throw in a little
+more coal, sonny; I'm half froze, but I guess that's the worst any one
+can say of me!"
+
+"You make much of it, whatever it is," said Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+"Maybe I do and maybe I don't," equivocated Mr. Shrimplin genially.
+
+"Maybe you're not above telling a body what kept you out half the
+night?" inquired his wife.
+
+"If you done and seen what I've did and saw," replied Mr. Shrimplin
+impressively, "you'd look for a little respect in your own home."
+
+"I'd be a heap quicker telling about it," said Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin turned to Custer.
+
+"I guess, you're thinking it was a burglar; but, sonny, it wasn't no
+burglar--so you got another guess coming to you," he concluded
+benevolently.
+
+"I know!" cried Custer. "Some one's been killed!"
+
+"Exactly!" said Mr. Shrimplin with increasing benevolence. "Some one has
+been killed!"
+
+"You done it!" cried Custer.
+
+"I found the party," admitted Mr. Shrimplin with calm dignity.
+
+"Oh!" But perhaps Custer's first emotion was on the whole one of
+disappointment.
+
+"How you talk!" said Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+"I reckon I might say more, most any one would," retorted Mr. Shrimplin
+quietly. "It was old man McBride--someone's murdered him for his money;
+I never seen the town so on end over anything before, but whoever wants
+to be well posted's got to come to me for the particulars. I seen the
+old man before Colonel Harbison seen him, I seen him before Andy Gilmore
+seen him, I seen him before the coroner seen him, or the sheriff or
+_any one_ seen him! I was on the spot ahead of 'em all. If any one wants
+to know how he looked just after he was killed, they got to come to me
+to find out. Colonel Harbison can't tell 'em, and Andy Gilmore can't
+tell 'em; it's only me knows them particulars!"
+
+The effect of this stirring declaration was quite all he had hoped for.
+Out of the tail of his eye he saw that Mrs. Shrimplin was, as she
+afterward freely confessed, taken aback. As for Custer, he had forgotten
+his disappointment that a death by violence had occurred for which his
+father was not directly responsible.
+
+"Did you see the man that killed old Mr. McBride?" asked Custer,
+breaking the breathless spell that was upon him.
+
+"No; if I'd been just about fifteen minutes sooner I'd have seen him;
+but I was just about that much too late, sonny. I guess he's a whole lot
+better off, though."
+
+"What would you have done if you'd seen him?" Custer's voice sank to a
+whisper.
+
+"Well, I don't pack a gun for nothing. If I'd seen him there, he'd had
+to go 'round to the jail with me. I guess I could have coaxed him there;
+I was ready for to offer extra inducements!"
+
+"And does everybody know you seen old Mr. McBride the first of any?"
+asked Custer.
+
+"I guess they do; I ain't afraid about that. Colonel Harbison's too much
+of a gentleman to claim any credit that ain't his; he'd be the first
+one to own up that he don't deserve no credit."
+
+"What took you into McBride's store? You hadn't no errand there." Mrs.
+Shrimplin was a careful and acquisitive wife.
+
+"I allow I made an errand there," said Mr. Shrimplin bridling. "I reckon
+many another man might have thought he hadn't no errand there either,
+but I feel different about them things. I was just turned into the
+Square when along comes young John North--"
+
+"What was he doing there?" suddenly asked Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+"I expect he was attending strictly to his own business," retorted Mr.
+Shrimplin, offended by the utter irrelevancy of the question.
+
+"Go on, pal" begged Custer.
+
+He felt that his mother's interruptions were positively cruel, and--so
+like a woman!
+
+"Me and young John North passed the time of day," continued Mr.
+Shrimplin, thus abjured, "and I started around the north side of the
+Square to light the lamp on old man McBride's own corner. If I'd knowed
+then--" he paused impressively, "if I'd just knowed then, that was my
+time! I could have laid hands on the murderer. He was there somewheres,
+most likely he was watching me; well, maybe it was all for the best, I
+don't know as a married man's got any right to take chances. Anyway, I
+got to within, well--I should say, thirty feet of that lamp-post when
+all of a sudden Bill began to act up. You never saw a horse act up like
+he done! He rose in his britching and then the other end of him come up
+and he acted like he wanted to set down on the singletree!"
+
+"Why did he do that?" asked Custer.
+
+"Well, I guess you've got some few things to learn, Custer;" said Mr.
+Shrimplin indulgently. "He smelt blood--that's what he smelt!"
+
+"Oh!" gasped Custer.
+
+"I've knowed it to happen before. It's instinct," explained Shrimplin.
+"'Singular,' says I, and out I jumps to have a look about. I walked to
+the lamp-post, and then I seen what I hadn't seen before, that old man
+McBride's store door was open, so I stepped on to the sidewalk intending
+to close it, but as I put my hand on the knob I seen where the snow had
+drifted into the room, so I knew the door must have been open some
+little time. That's mighty odd, I thinks, and then it sort of come over
+me the way Bill had acted, and I went along into the store in pretty
+considerable of a hurry."
+
+"Were you afraid?" demanded Custer in an awe-struck whisper.
+
+"I'll tell you the truth, Custer, I wasn't. I own I'd drawed my gun,
+wishing to be on the safe side. First thing I noticed was that the lamps
+hadn't been turned up, though they was all lit. I got back to the end of
+the counter when I came to a halt, for there in a heap on the floor was
+old man McBride, with his head mashed in where some one had hit him
+with a sledge. There was blood all over the floor, and it was a mighty
+sickenin' spectacle. I sort of looked around hoping I'd see the
+murderer, but he'd lit out, and then I went back to the front of the
+store, where I seen Colonel Harbison coming across the Square. I told
+him what I'd seen and he went inside to look; while he was looking,
+along come Andy Gilmore and I told him, too, and he went in. They knowed
+the murderer wasn't there, that I'd been in ahead of them. After, that
+the people seemed to come from every direction; then presently some one
+started to ring the town bell and that fetched more people, until the
+Square in front of the store was packed and jammed with 'em. Everybody'
+wanted to hear about it first-hand from me; they wanted the _full
+particulars_ from the only one who knowed 'em."
+
+Mr. Shrimplin paused for breath. The recollection of his splendid
+publicity was dazzling. He imagined the morrow with its possibility of
+social triumph; he went as far as to feel that Mrs. Shrimplin now had a
+certain sneaking respect for him.
+
+"Did you see tracks in the snow?" demanded Custer.
+
+"No, I didn't see nothing," declared Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"You seen young John North."
+
+It was Mrs. Shrimplin who spoke.
+
+"Well, yes, I seen young John North--I said I seen him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+PUTTING ON THE SCREWS
+
+
+A score of men and boys followed the undertaker's wagon to the small
+frame cottage that had been Archibald McBride's home for half a century,
+and a group of these assembled about the gate as the wagon drew up
+before it. Along the quiet street, windows were raised and doors were
+opened. It was perhaps the first time, as it was to be the last, that
+Archibald McBride's neighbors took note of his home-coming.
+
+His keys had been found and intrusted to one of the policemen who
+accompanied the undertaker and his men; now, as the wagon came to a
+stand, this officer sprang to the ground, and pushing open the gate went
+quickly up the path to the front door. There in the shelter of the porch
+he paused to light a lantern, then he tried key after key until he found
+the one that fitted the lock; he opened the door and entered the house,
+the undertaker following him. A second officer stationed himself at the
+door and kept back the crowd. Their preparations were soon made and the
+two men reappeared on the porch.
+
+"It's all right," the undertaker said, and four men raised the stretcher
+again and carried the old merchant into the house.
+
+At this juncture Colonel Harbison, followed by his nephew and Gilmore,
+made his way through the crowd before the door. Gilmore, even, gave an
+involuntary shudder as they entered the small hall lighted by the single
+lantern, while the colonel could have wished himself anywhere else; he
+had come from a sense of duty; he had known McBride as well as any one
+in Mount Hope had known him, and it had seemed a lack of respect to the
+dead man to leave him to the care of the merely curious; but he was
+painfully conscious of the still presence in the parlor; he felt that
+they were unwelcome intruders in the home of that austere old man, who
+had made no friends, who had no intimates, but had lived according to
+his choice, solitary and alone. The colonel and Watt Harbison followed
+the gambler into what had been the old merchant's sitting-room. There
+were two lamps on the chimneypiece, both of which Gilmore lighted.
+
+"That's a whole lot better," he said.
+
+"Anything more we can do, gentlemen?" asked the undertaker, coming into
+the room.
+
+"Nothing, thank you," answered the colonel in a tone of abstraction, and
+he felt a sense of relief when the officials had gone their way into the
+night, leaving him and his two companions to their vigil.
+
+Now for the first time they had leisure and opportunity to look about
+them. It was a poor enough place, all things considered; the furniture
+was dingy with age and neglect, for Archibald McBride had kept no
+servant; a worn and faded carpet covered the floor; there was an
+engraving of Washington Crossing the Delaware and a few old-fashioned
+woodcuts on the wall; at one side of the room was a desk, opposite it a
+rusted sheet-iron stove in which Watt Harbison was already starting a
+fire; there was a scant assortment of uncomfortable chairs, a table,
+with one leg bandaged, and near the desk an old mahogany davenport.
+
+"This wouldn't have suited you, eh, Colonel?" said Gilmore at last.
+
+"He could hardly be said to live here, he merely came here to sleep,"
+answered the colonel.
+
+"No, he couldn't have cared for anything but the one thing," said
+Gilmore. "Were you ever here before, Colonel?" he added.
+
+"Never."
+
+"I don't suppose half a dozen people in the town were ever inside his
+door until to-night," said Watt Harbison, speaking for the first time.
+
+Gilmore turned to look at the colonel's nephew as if he had only that
+moment become aware of his presence. What he saw did not impress him
+greatly, for young Watt, save for an unusually large head, was much like
+other young men of his class. His speech was soft, his face beardless
+and his gray eyes gazed steadily but without curiosity on, what was for
+him, an uncliented world. For the eighteen months that he had been an
+"attorney and counselor at law" the detail of office rent had been taken
+care of by the colonel.
+
+"Sort of makes the game he played seem rotten poor sport," commented
+Gilmore, replying to the nephew but looking at the uncle.
+
+The colonel was silent.
+
+"Rotten poor sport!" repeated Gilmore.
+
+"Who'll come in for his property?" asked Watt Harbison.
+
+"Oh, some one will claim that," said Gilmore. "They were saying down at
+the store, that once, years ago, a brother of his turned up, here, but
+McBride got rid of him."
+
+"Suppose we have a look around before we settle ourselves for the
+night," suggested Watt Harbison.
+
+"Will you join us, Colonel?" asked the gambler.
+
+But the colonel shook his head. Gilmore took up one of the lamps as he
+spoke and opened a door that led into what had evidently once been a
+dining-room, but it was now only partly furnished; back of this was a
+kitchen, and beyond the kitchen a woodshed. Returning to the front of
+the house, they mounted to the floor above. Here had been the old
+merchant's bedroom; adjoining it were two smaller rooms, one of which
+had been used as a place of storage for trunks and boxes and broken bits
+of furniture; the other room was empty.
+
+"We may as well go back down-stairs," said the gambler, halting, lamp
+in hand, in the center of the empty room.
+
+Harbison nodded, and leading the way to the floor below, they rejoined
+the colonel in the sitting-room, where they made themselves as
+comfortable as possible.
+
+The colonel and his nephew talked in subdued tones, principally of the
+murdered man; they had no desire to exclude their companion from the
+conversation, but Gilmore displayed no interest in what was said. He sat
+at the colonel's elbow, preoccupied and thoughtful, smoking cigar after
+cigar. Presently the colonel and his nephew lapsed into silence. Their
+silence seemed to rouse Gilmore to what was passing about him. He
+glanced at the elder Harbison.
+
+"You look tired, Colonel," he said. "Why don't you stretch out on that
+lounge yonder and take a nap?"
+
+"I think I shall, Andy, if you and Watt don't mind." And the colonel
+quitted his chair.
+
+"Better put your coat over you," advised the gambler.
+
+He watched the colonel as he made himself comfortable on the lounge,
+then he lighted a fresh cigar, tilted his chair against the wall and
+with head thrown back studied the ceiling. Watt Harbison made one or two
+tentative attempts at conversation, to which Gilmore briefly responded,
+then the young fellow also became thoughtful. He fell to watching the
+gambler's strong profile which the lamp silhouetted against the opposite
+wall; then drowsiness completely overcame him and he slept in his chair
+with his head fallen forward on his breast.
+
+Gilmore, alert and sleepless, smoked on; he was thinking of Evelyn
+Langham. After his interview with her husband that afternoon he had gone
+to his own apartment. His bedroom adjoined North's parlor and through
+the flimsy lath and plaster partition he had distinctly heard a woman's
+voice. The sound of that voice and the suspicion it instantly begot
+added to his furious hatred of North, for he had long suspected that
+something more than friendship existed between Marshall Langham's wife
+and Marshall Langham's friend.
+
+"Damn him!" thought the gambler. "I'll fix him yet!" And he puffed at
+his cigar viciously.
+
+He had made sure that North's mysterious visitor was Evelyn Langham, for
+when she left the building he himself had followed her. Out of the dregs
+of his nature this foolish mad passion of his had arisen to torture him;
+he had never spoken with Langham's wife, probably she knew him by sight,
+nothing more; but still his game, the waiting game he had been forced to
+play, was working itself out better than he had even hoped! At last he
+had Marshall Langham where he wanted him, where he could make him feel
+his power. Langham would not be able to raise the money required to
+cover up those forgeries, and on the basis of silence he would make his
+bargain with the lawyer.
+
+Gilmore pondered this problem for the better part of an hour,
+considering it from every conceivable angle; then suddenly the
+expression of his face changed, he forgot for the moment his ambitions
+and his desires, his hatred and his love; he thought he heard the click
+of the old-fashioned latch on the front gate. He remembered that it
+could be raised only with difficulty. Next he heard the sound of
+footsteps approaching the house. They seemed to come haltingly down the
+narrow brick path which the wind had swept clear of snow.
+
+Mr. Gilmore was blessed with a steadiness of nerve known to but few men,
+yet the hour and the occasion had their influence with him. He stood
+erect: now the steps which had paused for a moment seemed to recede; it
+was as if the intruder, whoever he might be, had come almost to the
+front door and had then, for some inexplicable reason, gone back to the
+street. Gilmore even imagined him as standing there with his hand on the
+latch of the gate. He was tempted to rouse his two companions, but he
+did not, and then, as he still stood with his senses tense, he heard the
+steps again approach the front door. With a glance in the direction of
+the colonel and his nephew to assure himself that they still slept,
+Gilmore rather shamefacedly slipped his right hand under the tails of
+his coat, tiptoed into the hall and paused there close by the parlor
+door. The steps outside continued, he heard the porch floor give under
+a weight, and then some one rapped softly on the door.
+
+Gilmore waited an instant; the rap was repeated; he stepped to the door,
+shot the bolt and opened it. The storm had passed; it was now cold and
+clear, a brilliant, starlit, winter's night. He saw the man on the porch
+clearly as he stood there with the world in white at his back. Gilmore
+instantly recognized him, and his hand came from under the tails of his
+coat; he closed the door softly.
+
+"What sort of a joke is this, Marsh?" he demanded in a whisper.
+
+"Joke?" repeated the lawyer in a thick husky voice, as he took an
+uncertain step toward the gambler.
+
+"Your coming here at this hour; if it isn't a joke, what is it?"
+
+Gilmore saw that his face was flushed with drink while his eyes shone
+with a light he had never seen in them before. He must have been abroad
+in the storm for some time, for the snow had lodged in the rim of his
+hat and his shoulders were still white with it; now and again a paroxysm
+of shivering seized him.
+
+"Whisky chill," thought the gambler. "Come in, Marsh!" he said, but
+Langham seemed to draw back instinctively.
+
+"No, I guess not, Andy!" and a sickly pallor overspread his face.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" demanded Gilmore.
+
+"I want to see you," said the other. "I can't go home yet." He swayed
+heavily. "I need to talk to you on a matter of business. Come on
+out--come on off of here;" and he led the way down the porch steps.
+"Whom have you in there with you?" he questioned when he had drawn
+Gilmore a little way along the path.
+
+"The colonel and Watt Harbison."
+
+"No one else?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Do they know I'm here?"
+
+"I guess not, they were asleep two minutes ago."
+
+"That's good. I don't want to see them, I want to see you."
+
+"Wouldn't it keep, Marsh?" asked Gilmore.
+
+"No, sir, it wouldn't keep; I want to tell you just what I think of you,
+you damn--"
+
+"Oh, that will keep, Marsh, any time will do for that; anyway, you have
+told me something like that already! When you sober up--"
+
+"Do you think I'm drunk?"
+
+"I don't think anything about it."
+
+"Well, maybe I am, I have been under a strain. But I'm not too drunk to
+attend to business; I am never too drunk for that. I wish to say I have
+the money--"
+
+His lips twitched, and Gilmore, watching him furtively, saw that he was
+again shivering.
+
+"You got what, Marsh?" demanded Gilmore in a whisper.
+
+"The money, the money I owe you!"
+
+"Oh, I see!" He fell back a step and stared at Langham; there was
+apprehension dawning in his eyes. "Where did you get it?" he asked.
+
+But Langham shook his head.
+
+"That's my business; it's enough for you to get your money."
+
+"Well, you were quick about it," said Gilmore, and he rested his hand on
+the lawyer's arm.
+
+Langham moved a step aside.
+
+"You threatened me," he said resentfully, but with drunken dignity. "You
+were going to smash me; I wish to say that now you can smash and be
+damned! I have the money--"
+
+"Oh, come, Marsh! Don't you feel cut up about that; I didn't mean to
+make you mad; you mustn't hold that against me!"
+
+"You come to my office to-morrow and get your money," said Langham,
+still with dignity. "I've been under a great strain getting that money,
+and now I'm done with you--"
+
+Gilmore laughed.
+
+"What are you laughing at?"
+
+"You, you fool! But you aren't done with me; we'll be closer friends
+than ever after this. Just now you are too funny for me to take
+seriously. You go home and sleep off this drunk; that's my advice to
+you! I'd give a good deal to know where you have been and what sort of
+a fool you have been making of yourself since I saw you last!" added
+Gilmore.
+
+"Don't you worry about me; I'm all right. What I want to say is, lend me
+your keys; I can't go home this way--lend me your keys and I'll go to
+your rooms and sleep it off."
+
+"All right, Marsh; think you can get there?"
+
+"Of course; I'm all right."
+
+"And you'll go there if I give you my keys--you'll go nowhere else?"
+
+"Of course I won't, Andy!"
+
+"You won't stop to talk with any one?"
+
+"Who'll I find to talk with at this time of the night?" laughed the
+drunken man derisively. "It's three o'clock! Say, Andy, who'll I find to
+talk to?"
+
+"By God, I hope no one, you fool!" muttered Gilmore.
+
+"Well, give me the keys, Andy. I'll go along and get to bed, and I want
+you to forget this conversation--"
+
+"Oh, I'll forget it all right, Marsh--but you won't after you come to
+your senses!" he added under his breath.
+
+"Give me the keys--thanks. Good night, Andy! I'll see you in the
+morning."
+
+He reeled uncertainly down the path, cursing his treacherous footing as
+he went. At the gate he paused and waved an unsteady farewell to the
+gambler, who stood on the porch staring after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+THE BEAUTY OF ELIZABETH
+
+
+His interview with Evelyn Langham left North with a sense of moral
+nausea, yet he felt he had somehow failed in his comprehension of her,
+that she had not meant him to understand her as he had; that, after all,
+perhaps the significance he had given to her words was of his own
+imagining.
+
+He waited in his room until she should have time to be well on her way
+home, then hurried down-stairs. He was to dine at the Herberts' at seven
+o'clock, and as their place was but scant two miles from town, he
+determined to walk. He crossed the Square, only stopping to speak with
+the little lamplighter, and twenty minutes later Mount Hope, in the cold
+breath of the storm, had dwindled to a huddle of faint ghostly lights on
+the hillside and in the valley.
+
+The Herbert home, a showy country-place in a region of farms, merited a
+name; but no one except Mrs. Herbert, who in the first flush of
+possession determined so to dignify it, had ever made use of the name
+she had chosen after much deliberation. General Herbert himself called
+it simply the farm, while to the neighbors and the dwellers in Mount
+Hope it was known as the general's place, which perhaps sufficiently
+distinguished it; for its owner was still always spoken of as the
+general, though since the war he had been governor of his state.
+
+Rather less than half a century before, Daniel Herbert, then a country
+urchin tending cattle on the hillside where now stood his turreted stone
+mansion, had decided that some day when he should be rich he would
+return and buy that hillside and the great reach of flat river-bottom
+that lay adjacent to it, and there build his home. His worldly goods at
+the time of this decision consisted of a pair of jeans trousers, a
+hickory shirt, and a battered straw hat. For years he had forgotten his
+boyish ambition. He had made his way in the world; he had won success in
+his profession, the law; he had won even greater distinction as a
+soldier in the Civil War; he had been a national figure in politics, and
+he had been governor of his state. And then had come the country-bred
+man's hunger for the soil. He had remembered that hillside where as a
+boy he had tended his father's herds.
+
+He was not a rich man, but he had married a rich woman, and it was her
+money that bought the many acres and built the many-turreted mansion.
+Wishing, perhaps, to mark the impermanency of the life there and to give
+it a purely holiday aspect, Mrs. Herbert had christened the place Idle
+Hour; but the governor, beyond occasional participation in local
+politics, never again resumed those activities by which he had so
+distinguished himself. He wore top-boots and rode about the farm on an
+old gray horse, while his intimates were the neighboring farmers, with
+whom he talked crops and politics by the hour.
+
+In pained surprise Mrs. Herbert, a woman of great ambition, had endured
+five years of this kind of life; with unspeakable bitterness of spirit
+she had seen the once potent name of Daniel Herbert disappear from the
+newspapers, and then she had died.
+
+On her death the general became a rich and, in a way, a free man, for
+now he could, without the silent protest of his wife, recover the
+neglected lore of wood and field, and practise forgotten arts that had
+in his boyhood come under the elastic head of chores. Elizabeth, his
+daughter, had never shared her mother's ambitions. Perhaps because she
+had always had it she cared nothing for society. She was well content to
+ride about the farm with her father, whom she greatly admired, and at
+whose eccentricities she only smiled.
+
+In this agreeable comradeship with his daughter, General Herbert had
+lived through the period of his bereavement with very tolerable comfort.
+He had rendered the dead the dead's due of regretful tenderness; but
+Elizabeth never asked him when he was going to make his reëntry into
+politics; and she never reproached him with having wasted the very best
+years of his life in trying to make four hundred acres of
+scientifically farmed land show a profit, a feat he had not yet
+accomplished.
+
+Quitting the highway, North turned in at two stone pillars that marked
+the entrance to Idle Hour and walked rapidly up the maple-lined driveway
+to the great arched vestibule that gave to the house the appearance of a
+Norman-French château.
+
+Answering the summons of the bell, a maid ushered him into the long
+drawing-room, and into the presence of the general and his daughter. The
+former received North with a perceptible shade of reserve. He knew more
+about the young man than he would have cared to tell his daughter, since
+he believed it would be better for her to make her own discoveries where
+North was concerned. He had not opposed his frequent visits to Idle
+Hour, for he felt that if Elizabeth was interested in the young fellow
+opposition would only strengthen it. Glancing at North as he greeted
+Elizabeth, the general admitted that whatever he might be, he was
+presentable, indeed good-looking, handsome. Why hadn't he done something
+other than make a mess of his life! He wondered, too, wishing to be
+quite fair, if North had not been the subject of a good deal of
+unmerited censure, if, after all, his idleness had not been the worst
+thing about him. He hoped this might be true. Still he regretted that
+Elizabeth should have allowed their boy and girl friendship--they had
+known each other always--to grow into a closer intimacy.
+
+In the minds of these two men there was absolute accord on one point.
+Either would have said that Elizabeth Herbert's beauty was a supreme
+endowment, and more nearly perfect than the beauty of any other woman.
+She was slender, not tall, but poised and graceful with a distinction of
+bearing that added to her inches. Her hair was burnished copper and her
+coloring the tint of warm ivory with the sunlight showing through. North
+gazed at her as though he would store in his memory the vision of her
+loveliness. Then they walked out to the dining-room.
+
+The dinner was rather a somber feast. North felt the restraint of the
+general's presence; he sensed his disfavor; and with added bitterness he
+realized that this was his last night in Mount Hope, that the morrow
+would find him speeding on his way West. He had given up everything for
+nothing, and now that a purpose, a hope, a great love had come to him,
+he must go from this place, the town of his birth, where he had become a
+bankrupt in both purse and reputation.
+
+It was a relief when they returned to the drawing-room. There the
+general excused himself, and North and Elizabeth were left alone. She
+seated herself before the open fire of blazing hickory logs, whose
+light, and that of the shaded lamps, filled the long room with a soft
+radiance. She had never seemed so desirable to North as now when he was
+about to leave her. He stood silent, leaning against the corner of the
+chimneypiece, looking down on all her springlike radiance. Usually he
+was neither preoccupied nor silent, but to-night he was both. The
+thought that he was seeing her for the last time--Ah, this was the price
+of all his folly! At length he spoke.
+
+"I came to-night to say good-by, Elizabeth!"
+
+She glanced up, startled.
+
+"To say good-by?" she repeated.
+
+He nodded gloomily.
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to leave Mount Hope?" she asked slowly.
+
+"Yes, to-night maybe."
+
+Her glance no longer met his, but he was conscious that she had lost
+something of her serenity.
+
+"Are you sorry, Elizabeth?" he ventured.
+
+To pass mutely out of her life had suddenly seemed an impossibility, and
+his tenderness and yearning trembled in his voice. She answered
+obliquely, by asking:
+
+"Must you go?"
+
+"I want to get away from Mount Hope. I want to leave it all,--all but
+you, dear!" he said. "You haven't answered me, Elizabeth; will you
+care?"
+
+"I am sorry," she said slowly, and the light in her gray-blue eyes
+darkened.
+
+She heard the sigh that wasted itself on his lips.
+
+"I am glad you can say that,--I wish you would look up!" he said
+wistfully.
+
+"Are you going to-night?" she questioned.
+
+"Yes, but I am coming back. I shan't find that you have forgotten me
+when I come, shall I, Elizabeth?"
+
+She looked up quickly into his troubled face, and it was not the warm
+firelight that brought the rich color in a sudden flame to her cheeks.
+
+"I shall not forget you."
+
+There was a determined gentleness in her speech and manner that gave him
+courage.
+
+"I haven't any right to talk to you in this way; I know I haven't,
+but--Oh, I want you, Elizabeth!" And all at once he was on his knees
+beside her, his arms about her. "Don't forget me, dear! I love you, I
+Love you--I want you--Oh, I want you for my wife!"
+
+The girl looked into the passionate face upturned to hers, and then her
+head drooped. And so they remained long; his dark head resting in her
+arms; her fair face against it.
+
+"Why do you go, John?" she asked at length, out of the rich content of
+their silence.
+
+"I haven't any choice, dear heart; there isn't any place for me here. I
+have thought it all over, and I know I am doing the wise thing,--I am
+quite sure of this! I shall write you of everything that concerns me!"
+he added hastily, as he heard the tread of the general's slippered feet
+in the hall.
+
+North released her hands as the general entered the room. Elizabeth sank
+back in her chair. Her father glanced sharply at them, and North turned
+toward him frankly.
+
+"I am leaving on the midnight train, General, and I must say good-by; I
+have to get a few things together for my trip!"
+
+General Herbert glanced again at Elizabeth, but her face was averted and
+he learned nothing from its expression.
+
+"So you are going away! Well, North, I hope you will have a pleasant
+trip,--better let me send you into town?"
+
+And he reached for the bell-rope. North shook his head.
+
+"I'll walk, thank you," he said briefly.
+
+In silence he turned to Elizabeth and held out his hand. For an instant
+she rested hers in it, a cold little hand that trembled; their eyes met
+in a brief glance of perfect understanding, and then North turned from
+her. The general followed him into the hall.
+
+"It's stopped snowing, and you will have clear starlight for your walk
+home,--the wind's gone down, too!" he said, as he opened the hall door.
+
+"Don't come any farther, General Herbert!" said North.
+
+But the general followed him into the stone arched vestibule.
+
+"It's a fine night for your walk,--but you're quite sure you don't want
+to be driven into town?"
+
+"No, no,--good night." And North held out his hand.
+
+"Good night."
+
+North went down the carriageway, and Herbert reëntered the house.
+
+North kept to the beaten path for a little while, then left it and
+tramped out across the fields until he came to a strip of woodland that
+grew along a stony hillside. He followed this ridge back a short
+distance and presently emerged upon a sloping meadow that overhung a
+narrow ravine. Not two hundred yards distant loomed Idle Hour, somber
+and dark and massive. He found a stump on the edge of the woods and
+brushed the snow from it, then drawing his overcoat closely about him,
+he sat down and lit his pipe.
+
+The windows of Idle Hour still showed their many lights. At his feet a
+thread-like stream, swollen by the recent rains, splashed and murmured
+ceaselessly. He sat there a long time silent and absorbed, watching the
+lights, until at last they vanished from the drawing-room and the
+library. Then other lights appeared behind curtained windows on the
+second floor. These in their turn were extinguished, and Idle Hour sank
+deeper into the shadows as the crescent moon slipped behind the horizon.
+
+"God bless her!" North said aloud.
+
+He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and retraced his steps to the drive.
+He had but turned from this into the public road when he heard the
+clatter of wheels and the beat of hoofs, and a rapidly driven team swung
+around a bend in the road in front of him. He stepped aside to let it
+pass, but the driver pulled up abreast of him with a loud command to his
+horses.
+
+"Heard the news?" he asked, leaning out over the dash-board of his
+buggy.
+
+"What news?" asked North.
+
+"Oh, I guess you haven't heard!" said the stranger. "Well, old man
+McBride, the hardware merchant, is dead! Murdered!"
+
+"Murdered!" cried North.
+
+"Yes, sir,--murdered! They found him in his store this evening a little
+after six. No one knows who did it. Well, good night, I thought maybe
+you'd like to know. Awful, ain't it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+A GAMBLER AT HOME
+
+
+It was morning, and Mr. Gilmore sat by his cheerful open fire in that
+front room of his, where by night were supposed to flourish those games
+of chance which were such an offense to the "better element" in Mount
+Hope. Mr. Gilmore was hardly a person of unexceptional taste, though he
+had no suspicion of this fact, since he counted that room quite all that
+any gentleman's parlor should be.
+
+It was a large room furnished in dark velvet and heavy walnut. The red
+velvet curtains at the windows, when drawn at night, permitted no ray of
+light to escape; the carpet was a gorgeous Brussels affair, the like of
+which both as to cost and enduring splendor was not to be found
+elsewhere on any floor in Mount Hope. Seated as he then was, Gilmore
+could look, if so disposed, at the reflection of his own dark but not
+unhandsome face in a massive gilt-framed mirror that reached from
+chimneypiece to ceiling; or, glancing about the room, his eyes could
+dwell with genuine artistic pleasure on numerous copies in crayon of
+French figure-studies; nor were the like of these to be found elsewhere
+in Mount Hope.
+
+Gilmore had quitted the McBride cottage some three hours before, and in
+the interim had breakfasted well and napped abstemiously. Presently he
+must repair to the court-house, where, it had already been intimated,
+the coroner might wish to confer with him.
+
+Marshall Langham he had not seen. He had expected to find him still in
+his rooms, but the lawyer had left the key under the mat at the door,
+presumably at an early hour. Gilmore wondered idly if Langham had not
+made a point of getting away before he himself should arrive; he rather
+thought so, and he smiled with cheerful malevolence at his own
+reflection in the mirror.
+
+Here his reveries were broken in on by the awkward shuffling of heavy
+feet in the hallway, and then some one knocked loudly on his door.
+Gilmore glanced hastily about to assure himself that the tell-tale
+paraphernalia of his craft were nowhere visible, and that the room was
+all he liked to fancy it--the parlor of a gentleman with sufficient
+income and quiet taste.
+
+"Come in," he called at last, without quitting his chair.
+
+The door slowly opened and the crown of a battered cap first appeared,
+then a long face streaked with coal-dust and grime and further decorated
+about the chin by a violently red stubble of several days' growth. With
+so much of himself showing; the new-comer paused on the threshold in
+apparent doubt as to whether he would be permitted to enter, or ordered
+to withdraw.
+
+"Come in, Joe, and shut the door!" said Gilmore.
+
+At his bidding the shoulders and trunk, and lastly the legs of a
+slouching shambling man of forty-eight or fifty entered the room.
+
+Closing the door Joe Montgomery slipped off one patched and ragged cloth
+mitten and removed his battered cap.
+
+"Well, what the devil do you want?" demanded Gilmore sharply.
+
+Joe, shuffling and shambling, edged toward the grate.
+
+"Boss, I want to drop a word with you!" he said in a husky voice. His
+glance did not quite meet Gilmore's, but the moment Gilmore shifted his
+gaze, that moment Joe's small, bright blue eyes sought the gambler's.
+
+Gilmore and Joe Montgomery were distantly related, and while the latter
+never presumed on the score of this remote connection, the gambler
+himself tacitly admitted it by the help he now and then extended him,
+for Montgomery's means of subsistence were at the best precarious. If he
+had been called on to do so, he would have described himself as a
+handy-man, since he lived by the doing of odd jobs. He cleaned carpets
+in the spring; he cut lawns in the summer; in the fall he carried coal
+into the cellars of Mount Hope, and in the winter he shoveled the snow
+off Mount Hope's pavements; and at all times and in all seasons,
+whether these industries flourished or languished, he drank.
+
+He now established himself on Mr. Gilmore's hearth,--a necessity--for he
+bent his hulking body and stuck his curly red head well into the grate;
+then as he withdrew it, he passed the back of his hand across his
+discolored lip.
+
+"Excuse me, boss, I had to!" he apologized.
+
+In Mr. Gilmore's presence Joe inclined toward a humble decency, for he
+was vaguely aware that he was an unclean thing, and that only the
+mysterious bond of blood gave him this rich and powerful patron.
+
+"Well, you old sot!" said Gilmore pleasantly. "You haven't drunk
+yourself to death since I saw you in McBride's last night?"
+
+The handy-man gave him a wide toothless grin, and his bashful blue eyes
+shifted, shuttle-wise, in their sockets until he was able to survey in
+full the splendor of the apartment.
+
+"Boss, you got a sure-enough well-dressed room; I never seen anything
+that could hold a candle to it,--it's a bird!" He stole a shy abashed
+glance at the pictures on the wall, but becoming aware that Gilmore was
+watching him, he dropped his eyes in some confusion. "I reckon' them
+female pictures cost a fortune!" he said.
+
+"They cost enough!" rejoined Gilmore, and again Montgomery ventured a
+covert glance in the direction of one of the works of art.
+
+"I reckon it was summer-time!" he hinted modestly.
+
+Gilmore laughed.
+
+"How would you like one of them?" he asked.
+
+Montgomery gave him a swift glance of alarm.
+
+"No, boss, I'm a respectable married man, and if I lugged one of them
+ladies home with me, my old woman wouldn't do a thing but raise hell!
+Boss, they're raw; yes, sir, that's it--they're raw!" Then fearing he
+had gone too far in an adverse criticism, he added, "Friends of yours,
+boss?"
+
+"Not all of them!" said Gilmore, with lazy amusement.
+
+"Catched unawares?" hinted Montgomery. But Gilmore changed the subject
+abruptly.
+
+"Well, what did you come here for?" he demanded.
+
+"I got a lot of things on my mind, boss! I been a-worryin' all morning
+and then I thinks of you. 'Mr. Gilmore's the man to go to,' I tells
+myself, and I quit my job and come here."
+
+He stuck his head into the grate again, but this time without apology.
+
+"I suppose you are in trouble?" said Gilmore, and his genial mood seemed
+to chill suddenly.
+
+"You're right, boss, I'm in a heap of trouble!"
+
+"Well, then, clear out of here!" said Gilmore.
+
+"Hold on, boss, it ain't that kind of trouble" interposed the handy-man
+hastily.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Advice."
+
+Gilmore leaned back in his easy-chair and crossed his legs.
+
+"Go on!" he ordered briefly.
+
+"A handy-man like me doin' all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people is
+sure to see some curious things, ain't he, boss?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I'm here to tell you what I seen, boss; and every word of it will be
+God A'mighty's truth!"
+
+"It had better be!" rejoined Gilmore quietly, but with significant
+emphasis.
+
+"I don't want no better friend than you been to me," said Montgomery in
+a sudden burst of grateful candor. "You've paid two fines for me, and
+you done what you could for me that time I was sent up, when old man
+Murphy said he found me in his hen-house."
+
+Gilmore nodded.
+
+"I was outrageous put upon! The judge appointed that fellow Moxlow to
+defend me! Say, it was a hell of a defense he put up, and I had a friend
+who was willin' to swear he'd seen me in the alley back of Mike
+Lonigan's saloon cleaning spittoons when old man Murphy said I was in
+his chicken house; Moxlow said he wouldn't touch my case except on its
+merits, and the only merit it had was that friend, ready and willin' to
+swear to anything!" Montgomery shrugged his great slanting shoulders.
+"He's too damn perpendicular!"
+
+"He is," agreed Gilmore. "But what's this got to do with what you saw?"
+
+"Not a thing; but it makes me sweat blood whenever I think of the trick
+Moxlow served me,--it ain't as if I had no one but myself! I got a
+family, see? _I_ can't afford to go to jail,--it ain't as if I was
+single!"
+
+"Get back to your starting-point, Joe!" said Gilmore.
+
+"Who do you think killed old man McBride, boss?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"You ain't got any ideas about that?" asked Montgomery.
+
+Gilmore shot him a swift glance.
+
+"I don't know whether I have or not," he replied.
+
+"I have, boss."
+
+"You?" His tone betrayed neither eagerness nor interest.
+
+"That's what fetches me here, boss!" Joe replied, sinking his voice to a
+whisper. "I got a damn good notion who killed old McBride; I could go
+out on the street and put my hand on the man who done it!"
+
+"You mustn't come here with these pipe dreams of yours, Joe; you have
+been drunk and all this talk about the McBride murder's gone to your
+head!" retorted Gilmore contemptuously.
+
+"I hope I may die if I ain't as sober as you this minute, boss!"
+returned the handy-man impressively.
+
+"Well, what do you know--or think you know?" asked Gilmore with affected
+indifference.
+
+"Boss, did I ever lie to you?" demanded Montgomery.
+
+"If you did I never found you out."
+
+"And why? You never had no chance to find me out; for the reason that I
+always tell you the almighty everlastin' truth!"
+
+"Well?" prompted Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"Boss," and again Montgomery dropped his voice to a confidential
+whisper, "boss, I seen a man climb over old man McBride's shed yesterday
+just before six. I seen him come up on top of the shed from the inside,
+look all around, slide down to the eaves and drop into the alley, and
+then streak off as if all hell was after him!"
+
+Gilmore's features were under such admirable control that they betrayed
+nothing of what was passing in his mind.
+
+"Stuff!" he ejaculated at last, disdainfully.
+
+"You think I lie, boss?" cried Montgomery, in an intense whisper.
+
+"You know best about that," said Gilmore quietly.
+
+"He come so close to me I could feel his breath in my face! Boss, he was
+puffin' and pantin' and his breath burnt,--yes, sir, it burnt; and I
+heard him say, 'Oh, my God!' like that, 'Oh, my God!'"
+
+"And where were you when this happened?" demanded Gilmore with sudden
+sternness.
+
+Montgomery hesitated.
+
+"What's that got to do with it, boss?"
+
+"A whole lot; come, out with it. Where were you to see and hear all
+this?"
+
+"I was in White's woodshed," said Montgomery rather sullenly.
+
+"Oh, ho, you were up to your old tricks!"
+
+"He'll never miss it; I couldn't freeze to death; there's a livin'
+comin' to me," said the handy-man doggedly.
+
+"You'll probably have a try for it back of iron bars!" said Gilmore.
+
+But it was plain that Montgomery did not enjoy Mr. Gilmore's humor.
+
+"White's coal house is right acrost the alley from old McBride's shed.
+You can go look, boss, if you don't believe me, and there's a small door
+opening out on to the alley, where the coal is put in."
+
+"All the same you should keep out of people's coal houses, or one of
+these days you'll bring off more than you bargained for; say a load of
+shot."
+
+"Maybe you'd like to know who I seen come over that roof?" said the
+handy-man impatiently.
+
+"How many people have you told this yarn to already?" asked Gilmore, who
+seemed more anxious to discredit the handy-man in his own eyes than
+anything else.
+
+"Not a living soul, boss; I guess I know enough to hang a man--"
+
+"Pooh!" said Gilmore.
+
+"You don't believe me?"
+
+"Yes, I'll believe that you were stealing White's coal."
+
+"Leave me tell it to you just as it happened, boss," said Montgomery.
+"Then if you say I lie, I won't answer you back; we'll let it go at
+that."
+
+Gilmore appeared to consider for a moment, his look of mingled
+indifference and contempt had quite passed away.
+
+"I guess it sounds straight, Joe!" he said at length slowly.
+
+"Why? Because it _is_ straight, every damn word of it, boss."
+
+And as if to give emphasis to his words the handy-man swung out a grimy
+fist and dropped it into an equally grimy palm.
+
+"What did you do after that?" asked Gilmore.
+
+"Not much. I laid low and presently lifted my sack of coal out and
+ducked around to Lonigan's saloon. I went in there by the back door and
+left my sack leanin' against the building. Mike wanted his mail and he
+give me a drink of whisky if I'd take his keys and go to the post-office
+for him; I'd just come into the Square when I run into Shrimp who was
+tellin' how old man McBride was murdered. I went into the store and
+found you there with Colonel Harbison, you remember, boss?" Gilmore
+nodded and Montgomery continued. "I hadn't a chance to tell you what I'd
+seen, and all night long I kept hearin' him say it!"
+
+"Say what, Joe?"
+
+"Say, 'Oh, my God!' like I told you, boss; I couldn't sleep for it,--I
+wonder if he slept!"
+
+"Joe," said the gambler, "I'll tell you something that I have only told
+the sheriff. I was in Langham's office late yesterday and John North was
+there; he left to go to McBride's. Conklin's been looking for him this
+morning, but he can't find him, and no one seems to know what's become
+of him. Do you follow me?"
+
+"What's North got to do with it, boss?"
+
+"How do you know it wasn't North you saw in the alley?" urged Gilmore.
+
+"It were not!" said Joe Montgomery positively.
+
+"You saw the man's face?"
+
+"As plain as I see yours!"
+
+"And you know the man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I'll tell you who you saw," said the gambler coolly; "it was
+Marshall Langham."
+
+The handy-man swore a great oath.
+
+"You've guessed it, boss! You've guessed it."
+
+"It ain't a guess as it happens."
+
+"Boss, do you mean to tell me you knew all along?" demanded Montgomery
+incredulously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But what about North?"
+
+"That's his lookout, let him clear himself."
+
+Joe, shambling and shuffling, took a turn about the room.
+
+"Boss, if it was me that stood in his boots the halter would be as good
+as about my neck; they wouldn't give me no chance to clear myself,--they
+wouldn't let me! Them smart lawyers would twist and turn everything I
+said so that God A'mighty wouldn't know His own truth!"
+
+"Well, you were in that alley, Joe; if you feel for him, I expect we
+could somehow shift it to you!" said Gilmore.
+
+The handy-man slouched to the hearth again.
+
+"None of that, boss!" he cried. "I've told you what took me there, so
+none of that!"
+
+His voice shook with suppressed feeling, as he stood there scowling down
+on the gambler.
+
+"Sit down, Joe!" said Mr. Gilmore, unruffled.
+
+Reluctantly the handy-man sank into the chair indicated.
+
+"Now you old sot," began the gambler, "you listen to me! I suppose if
+they could shift suspicion so that it would appear you had had something
+to do with the old man's murder, it would take Moxlow and the judge and
+any decent jury no time at all to hang you; for who would care a damn
+whether you were hanged or not! But you needn't worry, I'm going to
+manage this thing for you, I'm going to see that you don't get into
+trouble. Now, listen, you're to let well enough alone. North is already
+under suspicion apparently. All right, we'll help that suspicion along.
+If you have anything to tell, you'll say that the man who came over that
+shed looked like North!"
+
+"Boss, I won't say a word about the shed or the alley!"
+
+"Oh, yes you will, Joe! The man looked like North,--you remember, at the
+time you thought he looked like North, and you thought you recognized
+his voice when he spoke, and you thought it was North's voice. He had on
+a black derby hat and a dark brown overcoat; don't forget that, Joe, for
+we are going to furnish young Mr. North with a bunch of worries."
+
+The handy-man looked at him doubtfully, sullenly.
+
+"I don't want to hang _him_, he's always treated _me_ white enough,
+though I never liked him to hurt."
+
+Gilmore laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"Oh, there's no chance of that, your evidence won't hang him, but it
+will give him a whole lot to think about; and Langham's a pretty decent
+fellow; if you treat him right, he'll keep you drunk for the rest of
+your days; you'll own him body and soul."
+
+"A ignorant man like me couldn't go up against a sharp lawyer like Marsh
+Langham! Do you know what'd happen to me? I'll tell you; I'd get so
+damned well fixed I'd never look at daylight except through jail
+windows; that's the trick I'd serve myself, boss."
+
+"I'll take that off your hands," said Gilmore.
+
+"And what do you get out of it, boss?" inquired the astute Mr.
+Montgomery.
+
+"You'll have to put your trust in my benevolence, Joe!" said the
+gambler. "But I am willing to admit I want to see North put where he'll
+have every inducement to attend strictly to his own business!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+THE STAR WITNESS
+
+
+It was between nine and ten o'clock when Marshall Langham reached his
+office. He scarcely had time to remove his hat and overcoat when a
+policeman entered the room and handed him a note. It was a hasty scrawl
+from Moxlow who wished him to come at once to the court-house.
+
+As Moxlow's messenger quitted the room Langham leaned against his desk
+with set lips and drawn face; this was but the beginning of the ordeal
+through which he must pass! Then slowly he resumed his hat and overcoat.
+
+The prosecuting attorney's office was on the second floor of the
+court-house, at the back of the building, and its windows overlooked the
+court-house yard.
+
+On the steps and in the long corridors, men stood about, discussing the
+murder. Langham pushed his way resolutely through these groups and
+mounted the stairs. Moxlow's door was locked, as he found when he tried
+to open it, but in response to his knock a bolt was drawn and a
+policeman swung open the door, closing it the instant Marshall had
+entered.
+
+Langham glanced around. Doctor Taylor--the coroner--was seated before
+the desk; aside from this official Colonel Harbison, Andy Gilmore,
+Shrimplin, Moxlow, Mr. Allison, the mayor, Conklin, the sheriff, and two
+policemen were present.
+
+"Thank you, that is all, Mr. Gilmore," the coroner had said as Langham
+entered the room.
+
+He turned and motioned one of the policemen to place a chair for the
+prosecuting attorney beside his own at the desk.
+
+"As you know, Mr. Moxlow," the coroner began, "these gentlemen, Mr.
+Shrimplin, Colonel Harbison and Mr. Gilmore, were the first to view the
+murdered man. Later I was summoned, and with the sheriff spent the
+greater part of the night in making an examination of the building. We
+found no clue. The murderer had gone without leaving any trace of his
+passing. It is probable he entered by the front door, which Mr.
+Shrimplin found open, and left by the side door, which was also open,
+but the crowd gathered so quickly both in the yard and in the street,
+that it has been useless to look for footprints in the freshly fallen
+snow. One point is quite clear, however, and that is the hour when the
+crime was committed. We can fix that almost to a certainty. The murderer
+did his work between half past five and six o'clock. Mr. Shrimplin has
+just informed us that the only person he saw on the Square, until he met
+Colonel Harbison, was John North, whom he encountered within a block of
+McBride's store and with whom he spoke. While Mr. Shrimplin stopped to
+speak with Mr. North the town bell rang the hour--six o'clock."
+
+The coroner paused.
+
+There was a moment's silence, then Marshall Langham made a half step
+forward. A sudden palsy had seized him, yet he was determined to speak;
+he felt that he must be heard, that he had something vital to say. An
+impulse he could not control compelled him to turn in the direction of
+Andy Gilmore, and for a brief instant his eyes fastened themselves on
+the gambler, who returned his gaze with a cynical smile, as though to
+say: "You haven't the nerve to do it." With the tip of his tongue
+Langham moistened his swollen lips. He was about to speak now, and
+Gilmore, losing his former air of bored indifference, leaned forward,
+eager to catch every word.
+
+"I would like to say," he began in a tolerably steady voice, "that North
+left my office at half past four o'clock yesterday afternoon intending
+to see Mr. McBride; indeed, happening to glance from my window, I saw
+him enter the store. Before he left my office he had explained the
+business that was taking him to McBride's; we had discussed it at some
+length."
+
+"What took him to McBride's?" demanded Doctor Taylor.
+
+"He went there to raise money on some local gas company bonds which he
+owned. Mr. McBride had agreed to buy them from him. I was able to tell
+North that I knew McBride could let him have the money in spite of the
+fact that it was a holiday and the banks were closed."
+
+"How did you happen to know that, Langham?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"Earlier in the day one of my clients had placed in McBride's hand a
+much larger sum of money than North expected to receive from him."
+
+"You told North that?" asked Moxlow eagerly.
+
+"I did. Perhaps you are not aware that McBride and North were on
+friendly terms; for years it had been North's habit to go to Mr. McBride
+whenever he had a sudden need of money. This I know to be a fact."
+
+He glanced about him and could see that what he had said was making its
+impression on his hearers.
+
+"When did you see McBride, at what hour?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"A little before two."
+
+"Do you feel at liberty to state the sum paid by your client?"
+
+"It was three thousand and fifty-seven dollars, all in cash."
+
+"There are one or two more questions I should like to ask you," said
+Moxlow. "You saw the money paid into Mr. McBride's hands before two
+o'clock yesterday afternoon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know what disposition he made of the money?"
+
+"No, I do not."
+
+"I mean, did he put it in his safe--in his pocket--"
+
+"He did neither in my presence, the bundle of bills was lying on his
+desk when I left."
+
+"You were not interrupted while you were transacting this business, no
+customer happened into the store?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"So far as I know, we three were absolutely alone in the building."
+
+"Afterward, when North called at your office, you mentioned this
+transaction?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know how many shares Mr. North expected to dispose of?"
+
+"Five, I think."
+
+Langham paused and glanced again in the direction of the gambler, but
+Gilmore seemed to have lost all interest in what was passing.
+
+Moxlow turned to Conklin.
+
+"You found no such sum as Mr. Langham mentions, either on the person of
+the dead man, or in the safe?"
+
+"No, the safe doors were standing open; as far as I am able to judge,
+the valuable part of its contents had been removed," replied the
+sheriff.
+
+"How about McBride himself?"
+
+"We found nothing in his pockets."
+
+"Of course, if he bought North's bonds, that would account for a part of
+the sum Mr. Langham has just told us of," said Moxlow. "But where are
+the bonds?" he added.
+
+"They were not among McBride's papers, that's sure," said the sheriff.
+
+"Probably they were taken also, though it's hardly conceivable that the
+murderer waited to sort over the papers in the safe. I tell you,
+gentlemen, his position was a ticklish one." It was the coroner who
+spoke.
+
+"It would seem a very desirable thing to communicate with North,"
+suggested Moxlow.
+
+"I guess you are right; yes, I guess we had better try and find Mr.
+North," said the coroner. "Suppose you go after him, Mr. Conklin. Don't
+send--go yourself," he added.
+
+Again Langham dragged himself forward; the coils of this hideous thing
+seemed to be tightening themselves about John North. Langham's face
+still bore traces of his recent debauch, and during the last few minutes
+a look of horror had slowly gathered in his bloodshot eyes. He now
+studiously avoided Gilmore's glance, though he was painfully aware of
+his presence. The gambler coolly puffed at a cigar as he leaned against
+the casing of the long window at Doctor Taylor's back; there was the
+faint shadow of a smile on his lips as he watched Langham furtively.
+
+"I doubt if North will be found," said the latter. "I doubt if he is in
+Mount Hope," he continued haltingly.
+
+"What?" It was Moxlow who spoke.
+
+"This morning I received a brief communication from him; it was written
+late last night; he informed me that he should leave for the West on the
+Chicago express. He inclosed the keys to his rooms."
+
+Marshall Langham glanced at Gilmore, who seemed deeply absorbed. The
+coroner fidgeted in his seat; dismay and unspeakable surprise were
+plainly stamped on Colonel Harbison's face; Moxlow appeared quite
+nonplussed by what his partner had last said.
+
+"I was aware that he contemplated this trip West," said Langham quickly.
+"He had asked me to dispose of the contents of his rooms when he should
+be gone."
+
+"Did he tell you where he was going, Marshall?" asked Moxlow.
+
+Langham raised his bloodshot eyes.
+
+"No; he seemed in some doubt as to his plans."
+
+"For how long a time have you known of Mr. North's intention to leave
+Mount Hope?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"Only since yesterday, but I have known for quite a while that he
+planned some radical move of this sort. I think he had grown rather
+tired of Mount Hope."
+
+"Isn't it true that his money was about gone?" questioned Moxlow
+significantly.
+
+"I know nothing of his private affairs," answered Langham hastily. "He
+has never seemed to lack money; he has always had it to spend freely."
+
+"It would appear that Mr. North is our star witness; what do you think,
+gentlemen?" and Moxlow glanced from one to another of the little group
+that surrounded him.
+
+"At any rate he is a most _important_ witness," emphasized the coroner.
+
+"North took the Chicago express as he had planned," said Gilmore
+quietly. "The bus driver for the United States Hotel, where I
+breakfasted, told me that he saw him at the depot last night."
+
+"I think we'd better wire North's description to the Chicago police; I
+see no other way to reach him." As he spoke, Moxlow turned to the
+sheriff. "You get ready to start West, Mr. Conklin. And don't let there
+be any hitch about it, either."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+HUSBAND AND WIFE
+
+
+Marshall Langham paused on the court-house steps; he was shaking as with
+an ague. He passed a tremulous hand again and again across his eyes, as
+though to shut out something, a memory--a fantasy he wanted to forget;
+but he well knew that at no time could he forget. Gilmore, coming from
+the building, stepped to his side.
+
+"Well, Marsh, what do you think?" he said.
+
+"What do I think?" the lawyer, repeated dully.
+
+"Doesn't it seem to you that Jack North has been rather unlucky in his
+movements?"
+
+"Oh, they make me tired!" cried Langham, with sudden passion.
+
+Gilmore stared at him, coldly critical. The lawyer moved away.
+
+"Going to your office, Marsh?" the gambler asked.
+
+"No, I'm going home," Langham said shortly, and went down the steps into
+the street.
+
+Home--until he could pull up and get control of himself, that was the
+best place for him!
+
+He turned into the Square, and from the Square into High Street, and ten
+minutes later paused before his own door. After a brief instant of
+irresolution he entered the house. Evelyn was probably down-town at that
+hour, on one of the many errands she was always making for herself.
+
+Without removing his hat or overcoat he dropped into a chair before the
+library fire. A devastating weariness possessed him, but he knew he
+could not hide there in his home. To-day he might, to-morrow even, but
+the time would come when he must go out and face the world, must listen
+to the endless speculation concerning Mount Hope's one great sensation,
+the McBride murder. Five minutes passed while he sat lost in thought,
+then he quitted his chair and went to a small cabinet at the other side
+of the room, which he unlocked; from it he took a glass and a bottle.
+With these he returned to his place before the fire and poured himself a
+stiff drink.
+
+"I was mad!" he said with quivering lips. "Mad!" he repeated, and again
+he passed his shaking hand across his eyes. Once more he filled his
+glass and emptied it, for the potent stuff gave him a certain kind of
+courage. Placing the bottle and glass on the table at his elbow, he
+resumed his seat.
+
+The bottle was almost empty when, half an hour later, he heard the house
+door open and close. It was Evelyn. Presently she came into the room,
+still dressed as if for the street.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Marsh?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Matter? Nothing," he said shortly.
+
+She glanced at the bottle and then at her husband.
+
+"Aren't you well?" she demanded.
+
+"I'm all right."
+
+"I hope you aren't going to start that now!" and she nodded toward the
+bottle.
+
+He made an impatient gesture.
+
+"Marshall, I am going to speak to the judge; perhaps if he knew he could
+do or say something; I am not going to bear this burden alone any
+longer!"
+
+"Oh, what's the use of beginning that; can't you see I'm done up?" he
+said petulantly.
+
+"I don't wonder; the way you live is enough to do any one up, as you
+call it; it's intolerable!" she cried.
+
+"What does it matter to you?"
+
+"It makes a brute of you; it's killing you!"
+
+"The sooner the better," he said.
+
+"For you, perhaps; but what about me?"
+
+"Don't you ever think of any one but yourself?" he sneered.
+
+"Is that the way it impresses you?" she asked coldly.
+
+She slipped into the chair opposite him and began slowly to draw off her
+gloves. Langham was silent for a minute or two; he gazed intently at her
+and by degrees the hard steely glitter faded from his heavy bloodshot
+eyes. Fascinated, his glance dwelt upon her; nothing of her fresh beauty
+was lost on him; the smooth curve of her soft white throat, the alluring
+charm of her warm sensuous lips, the tiny dimple that came and went when
+she smiled, the graceful pliant lines of her figure, the rare poise
+of her small head--his glance observed all. For better or for worse he
+loved her with whatever of the man there was in him; he might hate her
+in some sudden burst of fierce anger because of her shallowness, her
+greed, her utter selfishness; but he loved her always, he could never be
+wholly free from the spell her beauty had cast over him.
+
+[Illustration: Why, what's the matter, Marsh?]
+
+"Look here, Evelyn," he said at last. "What's the use of going on in
+this way, why can't we get back to some decent understanding?" He was
+hungry for tenderness from her; acute physical fear was holding him in
+its grip. He leaned back in his chair and found support for his head.
+"You're right," he went on, "I can't stand this racket much longer--this
+work and worry; we are living beyond our means; we'll have to slow up,
+get down to a more sane basis." The words came from his blue lips in
+jerky disjointed sentences. "What's the use, it's too much of a
+struggle! I do a thousand things I don't want to do, shady things in my
+practice, things no reputable lawyer should stoop to, and all to make a
+few dollars to throw away. I tell you, I am sick of it! Why can't we be
+as other people, reasonable and patient--that's the thing, to be
+patient, and just bide our time. We can't live like millionaires on my
+income, what's the use of trying--I tell you we are fools!"
+
+"Are matters so desperate with us?" Evelyn asked. "And is it all my
+fault?"
+
+"I can't do anything to pull up unless you help, me," Langham said.
+
+"Well, are matters so desperate?" she repeated.
+
+He did not answer her at once.
+
+"Bad enough," he replied at length and was silent.
+
+A sense of terrible loneliness swept over him; a loneliness peopled with
+shadows, in which he was the only living thing, but the shadows were
+infinitely more real than he himself. He had the brute instinct to hide,
+and the human instinct to share his fear. He poured himself a drink.
+Evelyn watched him with compressed lips as he drained the glass. He drew
+himself up out of the depths of his chair and began to tramp the floor;
+words leaped to his lips but he pressed them back; he was aware that
+only the most intangible barriers held between them; an impulse that
+grew in his throbbing brain seemed driving him forward to destroy these
+barriers; to stand before her as he was; to emerge from his mental
+solitude and claim her companionship. What was marriage made for, if not
+for this?
+
+"Look here," he said, wheeling on her suddenly. "Do you still love me;
+do you still care as you once did?" He seized one of her hands in his.
+
+"You hurt me, Marsh!" she said, drawing away from him.
+
+He dropped her hand and with a smothered oath turned from her.
+
+"You women don't know what love is!" he snarled. "Talk about a woman
+giving up; talk about her sacrifices--it's nothing to what a man does,
+where he loves!"
+
+"What does _he_ do that is so wonderful, Marsh?" she asked coldly.
+
+He paused and regarded her with a wolfish glare.
+
+"It's no damned anemic passion!" he burst out.
+
+"Thank you," she mocked. "Really, Marsh, you are outdoing yourself!"
+
+"You have never let me see into your heart,--never once!"
+
+"Perhaps it's just as well I haven't; perhaps it is a forbearance for
+which you should be only grateful," she jeered.
+
+"If you were the sort of woman I once thought you, I'd want to hide
+nothing from you; but a woman--she's secretive and petty, she always
+keeps her secrets; the million little things she won't tell, the little
+secrets that mean so much to her--and a man wastes his life in loving
+such a woman, and is bitter when he finds he's given all for nothing!"
+
+His heavy tramping went on.
+
+"Is that the way you feel about it?" she asked.
+
+"Yes!" he cried. "I'm infinitely more lonely than when I married you!
+Look here; I came to you, and in six months' time you knew a thousand
+things you had no right to know, unless you, too, were willing to come
+as close! But I'm _damned_ if I know the first thing about
+you--sometimes you are one thing, sometimes another. I never know where
+to find you!"
+
+"And I am to blame that we are unhappy? Of course you live in a way to
+make any woman perfectly happy--you are never at fault there!"
+
+"You never really loved me!"
+
+"Didn't I?" she sighed with vague emotion.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why did I marry you, Marsh?"
+
+"Heaven knows--I don't!"
+
+"Then why did you marry _me_?" She gave him a fleeting smile.
+
+"Because I loved you--because you had crept into my heart with your
+pretty ways, your charm, and the fascination of you. I hadn't any
+thought but you; you seemed all of my life, and I was going to do such
+great things for you. By God, I was going to amount to something for
+your sake! I was going to make you a proud and happy woman, but you
+wouldn't have it! You never got past the trivial things; the annoyances,
+the need of money, the little self-denials, the little inconveniences;
+you stopped there and dragged me back when I wanted to go on; you
+wouldn't have it, you couldn't or wouldn't understand my hopes--my
+ambitions!"
+
+"Marsh, I was only a girl!" she said.
+
+He put out his hand toward the bottle.
+
+"Don't, Marsh!" she entreated.
+
+He turned away and fell to pacing the floor again.
+
+"What happiness do we get out of life, what good? We go on from day to
+day living a life that is perfectly intolerable to us both; what's the
+use of it--I wonder we stand it!"
+
+"I have sometimes wondered that, too," Evelyn half whispered.
+
+"You had it in your power to make our life different, but you wouldn't
+take the trouble; and see where we have drifted; you don't trust me and
+I don't trust you--" She started. "What sort of a basis is that for a
+man and wife, for our life together?"
+
+"It's what we--what you have made it!" she answered.
+
+"No, it isn't; it's what _you_ have made it! I tell you, you were bored
+to death; you wanted noise and world! Remember how I used to come home
+from the office every night, and begrudged the moments when any one
+called? I wanted only you; I talked over my cases with you, my hopes and
+my ambitions; but you mighty soon got sick of that--you yawned, you were
+sleepy, and you wanted to go about; you thought it was silly staying
+cooped up like that, and seeing no one, going nowhere! It was stupid for
+you, you were bored to death, you wanted noise and excitement, to spend
+money, to see and be seen,--as if that game was worth the candle in a
+God-forsaken hole of a place like Mount Hope! You killed my ambition
+then and there; I saw it was no use. You wanted the results, but you
+wouldn't pay the price in self-denial and patience, and so we rushed
+into debt and it's been a scramble ever since! I've begged and borrowed
+and cheated to keep afloat!"
+
+"And I was the cause of it all?" she demanded with lazy scorn of him.
+
+"There was a time when I stood a chance of doing something, but I've
+fooled my opportunities away!"
+
+"What of the promises you made me when we were married--what about
+them?" she asked.
+
+"You created conditions in which I could not keep them!" he said.
+
+"I seem to have been wholly, at fault; at least from your point of view;
+but don't you suppose there is something _I_ could say? Do you suppose
+_I_ sit here silent because I am convinced that it is all my fault?"
+
+He did not answer her at once but continued to pace the floor; at length
+he jerked out:
+
+"No, I was at fault too. I've a nasty temper. I should have had more
+patience with you, Evelyn--but it was so hard to deny you anything you
+wanted that I could possibly give you--I'd have laid the whole world at
+your feet if I could!"
+
+"I believe you would, Marsh--then!" she said.
+
+"It's a pity you didn't understand me," he answered indifferently.
+
+Nothing he could say led in the direction he would have had it lead, for
+he wanted her to realize her part in what had happened, to know that the
+burden beneath which he had gone down was in a measure the work of her
+hands. His instinct was as primitive as a child's fear of the dark; he
+must escape from the horror of his isolation; his secret was made
+doubly terrifying because he knew he dared not share it with any living
+creature. Yet his mind played strange tricks with him; he was ready to
+risk much that he might learn what part of the truth he could tell her;
+he was even ready to risk all in a dumb brute impulse to gather up the
+remnants of his strength of heart and brain, and be the center of some
+widespread catastrophe; to put his fear in her soul just as it was in
+his own. How was she ever to comprehend the horror that held him in its
+cruel grasp, the thousand subtle shades of thought and feeling that had
+led up to this thing, from the memory of which he revolted! He turned
+his bloodshot eyes upon her, something of the old light was there along
+with the new; he had indeed loved her, but the fruit of this love had
+been rotten. He was silent, and again his heavy tread resounded in the
+room as he dragged himself back and forth.
+
+The force in him was stirring her. Sensation of any sort had always made
+its strong appeal to her. Without knowing what was passing in his mind
+she yet understood that it was some powerful emotion, and her pliant
+nerves responded. For the moment she forgot that she no longer loved
+him. She rose and went to his side.
+
+"Is it all my fault, Marsh?" she said.
+
+"What is your fault?" he asked, pausing.
+
+"That we are so unhappy; am I the only one at fault there?"
+
+He looked down into her face relentingly.
+
+"I don't know--I swear I don't know!" he said hoarsely.
+
+"What is it, Marsh--why are you so unhappy? Just because you love me?
+What an unkind thing to say!"
+
+He turned to the table to pour himself a drink, but she caught his hand.
+
+"For my sake, Marsh!" she entreated.
+
+Again he looked down into her eyes.
+
+"For my sake," she repeated softly.
+
+"By God, I'll never touch another drop!" he said.
+
+"Oh, you make me so happy!" she exclaimed.
+
+He crushed her in his arms until his muscles were tense. She did not
+struggle for release, but abandoned herself without a word to the
+emotion of the moment. Her head thrown back, her cheeks pale, her full
+lips smiling, she gazed up into his face with eyes burning with sudden
+fire.
+
+"How I love you!" he whispered.
+
+She slipped her arms about his neck with a little cry of ecstasy.
+
+"Oh, Marsh, I have been foolish, too, but this is the place for me--my
+place--against your very heart!" she said softly.
+
+For a long minute Langham held her so, and then tortured by sudden
+memory he came back sharply to the actualities. His arms dropped from
+about her.
+
+"What is it, dear?" she asked.
+
+She was not yet ready to pass from the passion of that moment.
+
+"It's too late--" he muttered brokenly.
+
+"No, dear, it's not too late, we have only been a little foolish. Of
+course we can go back; of course we can begin all over, and we know now
+what to avoid; that was it, we didn't know before, we were ignorant of
+ourselves--of each other. Why, don't you see, we are only just beginning
+to live, dear--you must have faith!" and again her arms encircled him.
+
+"But you don't know--" he stammered.
+
+"Don't know what, dear?"
+
+He dropped into his chair, and she sank on her knees at his side. A
+horrible black abyss into which he was falling, seemed to open at his
+feet. Her hands were the only ones that could draw him back and save
+him.
+
+"Don't know what?" she repeated.
+
+The mystery of his man's nature, with its mingled strength and weakness,
+was something she could not resist.
+
+"Does it ever do any good to pray, I wonder?" he gasped.
+
+"I wonder, too!" she echoed breathlessly.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"What rot I'm talking!" he said.
+
+"What is it that is wrong, Marsh?"
+
+"Nothing--nothing--I can't tell you--"
+
+"You can tell me anything, I would always understand--always, dear.
+Prove to me that our love is everything; take me back into your
+confidence!"
+
+"No," he gasped hoarsely. "I can't tell you--you'd hate me if I did;
+you'd never forget--you couldn't!"
+
+She turned her eyes on him in breathless inquiry.
+
+"I would--I promise you now! Marsh, I promise you, can't you believe--?"
+
+He shook his head and gazed somberly into her eyes. She rested her cheek
+against the back of his hand where it lay on the arm of his chair. There
+was a long silence.
+
+"But what is it, Marsh? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing's happened," he said at last. "I'm a bit worried, that's all,
+about myself--my debts--my extravagance; isn't that enough to upset me?
+Every one's crowding me!"
+
+There was another long pause. Evelyn sighed softly; she felt that they
+were coming back too swiftly to the every-day concerns of life.
+
+"I'm worried, too, about North!" Langham said presently.
+
+"About North--what about North?"
+
+"They are going to bring him back; didn't you know he had gone West? He
+went last night."
+
+"But _who_ is going to bring him back?"
+
+"They want him as a witness in the McBride case. They--Moxlow, that
+is--seems to think he knows something that may be of importance. He's a
+crazy fool, with his notions!"
+
+"But North--" Evelyn began.
+
+"It may make a lot of trouble for him. They are going to bring him back
+as a witness, and unless he gives a pretty good account of himself,
+Moxlow's scheme is to try and hold him--"
+
+"What do you mean by a good account of himself?"
+
+"He'll, have to be able to tell just where he was between half past five
+and six o'clock last night; that's when the murder was committed,
+according to Taylor."
+
+"Do you mean he's suspected, Marsh? But he couldn't have done it!" she
+cried.
+
+"How do you know?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Why, I was there--"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"With him--"
+
+"Here--was he here?" A great load seemed lifted from him.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"He was here between five and six?" he repeated. He glanced at her
+sharply. "Why don't you answer me?"
+
+"No, he was not here," she said slowly.
+
+"Where was he, then?" he demanded. "What's the secret, anyhow?"
+
+"Marsh, I'm going to tell you something," she said slowly. "Nothing
+shall stand between our perfect understanding, our perfect trust for the
+future. You know I have been none too happy for the last year--I don't
+reproach you--but we had gotten very far apart somehow. I've never been
+really bad--I've been your true and faithful wife, dear, always--always,
+but--you had made me very unhappy--" She felt him shiver. "And I am not
+a very wise or settled person--and we haven't any children to keep me
+steady--"
+
+"Thank God!" the man muttered hoarsely under his breath.
+
+"What do you say?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing--go on; what is it you want to tell me?"
+
+"Something--and then perhaps you will trust me more fully with the
+things that are oppressing you. I believe you love me, I believe it
+absolutely--" she paused.
+
+The light died out of his eyes.
+
+"Marsh," she began again. "Could you forgive me if you knew that I'd
+thought I cared for some one else? Could you, if I told you that for a
+moment I had the thought--the silly thought, that I cared for another
+man?" She was conscious that his hand had grown cold beneath her cheek.
+"It was just a foolish fancy, quite as innocent as it was foolish, dear;
+you left me so much alone, and I thought you really didn't care for me
+any more, and so--and so--"
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Well, that is all, Marsh."
+
+"All?"
+
+"Yes, it went no further than that, just a silly fancy, and I'd known
+him all my life--"
+
+"Of whom are you speaking?"
+
+"Of John North--"
+
+"Damn him!" he cried. "And so that's what brought him here--and you were
+with him last night!" He sprang to his feet, his face livid. "What do
+you take me for? Do you expect me to forgive you for that--"
+
+"But Marsh, it was just a silly sentimental fancy! Oh, why did I tell
+you!"
+
+"Yes, why _did_ you tell me!" he stormed.
+
+"Because I thought it would make it easier for you to confess to _me_--"
+
+"Confess to you? I've nothing to confess--I've loved you honestly! Did
+you think I'd been carrying on some nasty sneaking intrigue with a
+friend's wife--did you think I was that sort of a fellow--the sort of a
+fellow North is? Do you take me for a common blackguard?"
+
+"Marsh, don't! Marshall, please--for my sake--" and she clung to him,
+but he cast her off roughly.
+
+"Keep away from me!" he said with sullen repression, but there was a
+murderous light in his eyes. "Don't touch me!" he warned.
+
+"But say you forgive me!"
+
+"Forgive you--" He laughed.
+
+"Yes, forgive me--Marsh!"
+
+"Forgive you--no, by God!"
+
+He reached for the bottle.
+
+"Not that--not that, Marsh; your promise only a moment ago--your
+promise, Marsh!"
+
+But he poured himself half a tumbler of whisky and emptied it at a
+swallow.
+
+"To hell with my promise!" he said, and strode from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+THE FINGER OF SUSPICION
+
+
+In Chicago Conklin found an angry young man at police headquarters, and
+the name of this young man was John North.
+
+"This is a most damnable outrage!" he cried hotly the moment he espied
+Mount Hope's burly sheriff.
+
+"I am mighty sorry to have interfered with your plans, John--just mighty
+sorry." The sheriff's tone was meant to soothe and conciliate. "But you
+see we are counting on you to throw some light on the McBride murder."
+
+"So that's it! I tell you, Conklin, I consider that I have been treated
+with utter discourtesy; I've been a virtual prisoner here over night!"
+
+"That's too bad, John," said the sheriff sympathetically, "but we didn't
+know where a wire would reach you, so there didn't seem any other way
+than this--"
+
+"Well, what do you want with me?" demanded North, with rather less heat
+than had marked his previous speech.
+
+"They got the idea back home that you can help in the McBride matter,"
+explained the sheriff again. "I see that you know he's been murdered."
+
+"Yes, I knew that before I left Mount Hope," rejoined North.
+
+"Did you, though?" said the sheriff briefly, and this admission of
+North's appeared to furnish him with food for reflection.
+
+"Well, what do I know that will be of use to you?" asked North
+impatiently.
+
+"You ain't to make any statement to me, John," returned the sheriff
+hastily.
+
+"Do you mean you expect me to go back to Mount Hope?" inquired North in
+a tone of mingled wonder and exasperation.
+
+The sheriff nodded.
+
+"That's the idea, John," he said placidly.
+
+"What if I refuse to go back?"
+
+The sheriff looked pained.
+
+"Oh, you won't do that--what's the use?"
+
+"Do you mean--" began North savagely, but Conklin interposed.
+
+"Never mind what I mean, that's a good fellow; say you'll take the next
+train back with me; it will save a lot of, bother!"
+
+"But I strongly object to return to Mount Hope!" said North.
+
+"Be reasonable--" urged the sheriff.
+
+"This is an infernal outrage!" cried North.
+
+"I'm sorry, John, but make it easy for me, make it easy for yourself;
+we'll have a nice friendly trip and you will be back here by the first
+of the week."
+
+For a moment North hesitated. He had so many excellent reasons why he
+did not wish to return to Mount Hope, but he knew that there was
+something back of Mr. Conklin's mild eye and yet milder speech.
+
+"Well, John?" prompted the sheriff encouragingly.
+
+"I suppose I'll go with you," said North grudgingly.
+
+"Of course you will," agreed the sheriff.
+
+He had never entertained any doubts on this point.
+
+It was ten o'clock Saturday morning when North and the sheriff left the
+east-bound express at Mount Hope and climbed into the bus that was
+waiting for them.
+
+North's annoyance had given place to a certain humorous appreciation of
+the situation. His plans had gone far astray in the past forty-eight
+hours, and here he was back in Mount Hope. Decidedly his return, in the
+light of his parting with Elizabeth, was somewhat in the nature of an
+anticlimax.
+
+They were driven at once to the court-house. There in his office they
+found Moxlow with the coroner and North was instantly aware of restraint
+in the manner of each as they greeted him, for which he could not
+account.
+
+"Sit down, North," said Moxlow, indicating a chair.
+
+"Now what is it?" North spoke pleasantly as he took his seat. "I've been
+cursing you two all the way home from Chicago."
+
+"I am sorry you were subjected to any annoyance in the matter, but it
+couldn't be helped," said Moxlow.
+
+"I'm getting over my temper," replied North. "Fire away with your
+questions!"
+
+The prosecuting attorney glanced at his fellow official.
+
+"You are already acquainted with the particulars of the shocking tragedy
+that has occurred here?" said Taylor with ponderous dignity.
+
+"Yes," said North soberly. "And when I think of it, I am more than
+willing to help you in your search for the guilty man."
+
+"You knew of the murder before you left town?" remarked Moxlow casually.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you weren't on the Square or in the store Thanksgiving night?" said
+Moxlow.
+
+"No, I dined with General Herbert." The prosecuting attorney elevated
+his eyebrows. "I must have been on my way there when the crime was
+discovered; I was returning home perhaps a little after eleven when I
+met a man who stopped me to tell me of the murder--"
+
+"You were with Mr. McBride Thanksgiving afternoon, were you not?" Moxlow
+now asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What was the hour, can you state?"
+
+"About half past four, I should say; certainly no later than that. I
+went there on a matter of business, to dispose of some bonds Mr.
+McBride had agreed to take off my hands; I was with him, maybe twenty
+minutes."
+
+"What were those bonds?"
+
+"Local gas bonds."
+
+"How many were there in the lot you sold?"
+
+"Five."
+
+"He paid you the money for them?"
+
+"Yes, a thousand dollars."
+
+"Do you know, we haven't unearthed those bonds yet?" said the doctor.
+
+Moxlow frowned slightly.
+
+"I suppose they were taken," said North.
+
+"But it will be a dangerous thing, to attempt to realize on them,"
+snapped Moxlow.
+
+"Decidedly," agreed North.
+
+"You left McBride's store at, say, five o'clock?" said Moxlow.
+
+"Not later than that--see here, Moxlow, what are you driving at?"
+demanded North, with some show of temper.
+
+For an instant Moxlow hesitated, then he said:
+
+"The truth is, North, there is not a clue to go on, and we are thrashing
+this thing over in the hope that we may sooner or later hit on something
+that will be of service to us."
+
+"Oh, all right," said North, with a return of good nature.
+
+"During your interview with McBride you were not interrupted, no one
+came into the store?"
+
+"No one; we were alone the entire time."
+
+"And you saw no one hanging about the place as you left it?"
+
+"Not that I can remember; if I did it made no impression on me."
+
+"But didn't you see Shrimplin?" asked Moxlow quickly.
+
+"Oh, come, Moxlow, you can't play the sleuth,--that was afterward, you
+know it was!"
+
+"Afterward--"
+
+"Yes, just as I was starting for the general's place, fully an hour
+later."
+
+"In the meantime you had been where--"
+
+"From McBride's store I went to my rooms. I remained there until it was
+time to start for the Herberts', and as I intended to walk out I started
+earlier than I otherwise should have done."
+
+"Then you were coming from your rooms when you met Shrimplin?"
+
+"Yes, it was just six o'clock when I stopped to speak to him."
+
+"Shrimplin was the only person you met as you crossed the Square?"
+
+"As far as I can remember now, I saw no one but Shrimp."
+
+"And just where did you meet him, North?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"On the corner, near McBride's store."
+
+"Do you know whether he had just driven into the Square or not?"
+
+"No, I, don't know that; it was snowing hard and I came upon him
+suddenly."
+
+"You continued on your way out of town after speaking with him, North?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And later, at eleven o'clock, as you were returning to town you met a
+stranger, probably a countryman, you say, who told you that McBride had
+been murdered?"
+
+"Yes, you have that all straight."
+
+"On your return to town you went where?"
+
+"To my rooms again and finished packing."
+
+"Did that take you two hours?"
+
+"No, but I had a lot of things to see to there."
+
+"What?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"Oh, papers to destroy, and things of that sort that kept me pretty busy
+until train-time."
+
+"You walked to the depot?"
+
+"Yes, I was too late for the hotel bus; in fact, I barely caught the
+train. I just had time to jump aboard as it pulled out."
+
+"Excuse me a moment, North!" said Moxlow as he rose from his chair.
+
+He quitted the room and North heard him pass down the hall.
+
+"It's a bad business," said Taylor.
+
+"And you haven't a suspicion as to the guilty man?"
+
+"No, as Moxlow says, we haven't a clue to go on. It's incredible though,
+isn't it, that a crime like that could have been committed here almost
+in broad daylight, and its perpetrator get away without leaving a trace
+behind?"
+
+"It _is_ incredible," agreed North, and they lapsed into silence.
+
+North thought of Elizabeth. He would slip out to Idle Hour that
+afternoon or evening; he couldn't leave Mount Hope without seeing her.
+The coroner drummed on his desk; he wondered what had taken Moxlow from
+the room in such haste. The prosecuting attorney's brisk step sounded in
+the hall again, and he reëntered the room and resumed his chair.
+
+"Just one or two more questions, North, and then I guess we'll have to
+let you go," he said. "You have been on very friendly terms with the
+murdered man for some time, have you not?"
+
+"He was very kind to me on numerous occasions."
+
+"In a business way, perhaps?"
+
+"Largely in a business way, yes."
+
+"It--pardon me--usually had to do with raising money, had it not?"
+
+North laughed.
+
+"It had."
+
+"You were familiar with certain little peculiarities of his, were you
+not, his mistrust of banks for instance?"
+
+"Yes, he had very little confidence in banks, judging from what he said
+of them."
+
+"Did he ever tell you that he had large sums of money hidden away about
+the store?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But always when you had business dealings with him he gave you the
+ready money, very rarely a check?"
+
+"Never in all my experience a check, always the cash."
+
+"Yet the sums involved were usually considerable?"
+
+"In one or two instances they reached a thousand dollars, if you call
+that considerable."
+
+"And he always had the money on hand?"
+
+"Well, I can't quite say that; it always involved a preliminary
+discussion of the transaction; I had to see him and tell him what I
+wanted and then go again after the money. It was as if he wished me to
+think he did not keep any large sum about him at the store."
+
+"Did he ever, in talking with you, express any apprehension of robbery
+or violence?"
+
+"No, never."
+
+"You had spoken to him about those bonds before?"
+
+"Yes, Monday I saw him and asked him if he would take them off my hand."
+
+"And he gave you to understand that if you would wait a day or two he
+would buy the bonds."
+
+North nodded.
+
+"Hadn't you learned prior to going to the store that McBride had just
+received three thousand dollars in cash from Atkinson?"
+
+"Yes, I knew that,--Langham told me."
+
+"So that it is reasonable to suppose that McBride had at least four
+thousand dollars in his safe Thursday afternoon."
+
+"I suppose it is, but I saw only the thousand he paid me for the bonds."
+
+"That came from the safe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I guess that's all for the present, North."
+
+"Do you mean you shall want to see me again?" asked North, rising.
+
+"Yes, you won't leave town to-day; the inquest is to be held this
+afternoon, you will probably be wanted then, so hold yourself in
+readiness."
+
+"I hope you will arrange to get through with me as soon as possible,
+Moxlow!"
+
+"We won't put you to any unnecessary inconvenience if we can help it,"
+returned Moxlow, with a queer cold smile.
+
+"Thank you," said North and quitted the room.
+
+He sauntered out into the street; he was disposed to consider Mr. Moxlow
+as something of a fool, as a rank amateur in the present crisis. He
+turned into the Square and halted for an instant before the dingy store
+that had been the scene of the recent tragedy. People on the street
+paused when they had passed and turned to stare after him, but North was
+unaware of this, as he was unaware that his name had come to be the one
+most frequently mentioned in connection with the McBride murder.
+Suddenly he quickened his step; just ahead of him was Marshall Langham.
+
+"Hello, Marsh!" he said, and stepped eagerly forward with extended hand.
+
+The lawyer paused irresolutely and turned on him a bloated face, but
+there was no welcome in the sullen glance.
+
+"Marsh--"
+
+Langham's lips twitched and an angry murmur came from them, but the
+words were indistinct.
+
+"What's wrong?" asked North, falling back a step in astonishment.
+
+"Yes, what's wrong!" said Langham in a hoarse whisper. "Hell! You have
+nerve to stick out your hand to me--you have bigger nerve to ask me
+that,--get out of my way!" and he pushed past North and strode down the
+street without a single backward glance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+JOE TELLS HIS STORY
+
+
+The inquest was held late Saturday afternoon in the bleak living-room of
+the McBride house. The coroner had explained the manner in which the
+murdered man had come to his death, and as he finished he turned to
+Moxlow. The prosecuting attorney shifted his position slightly, thrust
+out his long legs toward the wood-stove, and buried his hands deep in
+his trousers pockets, then he addressed the jury.
+
+They were there, he told them, to listen to certain facts that bore on
+the death of Archibald McBride. If, after hearing these facts, they
+could say they pointed to any person or persons as being implicated in
+the murder, they were to name the person or persons, and he would see
+that they were brought before the grand jury for indictment. They were
+to bear in mind, however, that no one was on trial, and that no one was
+accused of the crime about to be investigated, yet they must not forget
+that a cold-blooded murder had been committed; human hands had raised
+the weapon that had crushed out the life of the old merchant, human
+intelligence had made choice of the day and hour and moment for that
+brutal deed; the possibility of escape had been nicely calculated,
+nothing had been left to chance. He would venture the assertion that if
+the murderer were ever found he would prove to be no ordinary criminal.
+
+All this Moxlow said with judicial deliberation and with the lawyer's
+careful qualifying of word and phrase.
+
+Shrimplin was the first witness. He described in his own fashion the
+finding of Archibald McBride's body. Then a few skilful questions by
+Moxlow brought out the fact of his having met John North on the Square
+immediately before his own gruesome discovery. The little lamplighter
+was excused, and Colonel Harbison took his: place. He, in his turn,
+quickly made way for Andy Gilmore. Moxlow next interrogated Atkinson,
+Langham's client, who explained the nature of his business relations
+with McBride which had terminated in the payment of three thousand
+dollars to him on Thanksgiving afternoon, the twenty-seventh of
+November.
+
+"You are excused, Mr. Atkinson," said Moxlow.
+
+For an instant his eyes roved over the room; they settled on Marshall
+Langham, who stood near the door leading into the hall. By a gesture he
+motioned him to the chair Atkinson had vacated.
+
+Langham's testimony was identical with that which he had already given
+in the informal talk at Moxlow's office; he told of having called on
+Archibald McBride with his client and, urged on by Moxlow, described
+his subsequent conversation with North.
+
+Up to this point John North had felt only an impersonal interest in the
+proceedings, but now it flashed across him that Moxlow was seeking to
+direct suspicion toward him. How well the prosecuting attorney was
+succeeding was apparent. North realized that he had suddenly become the
+most conspicuous person in the room; whichever way he turned he met the
+curious gaze of his townsmen, and each pair of eyes seemed to hold some
+portentous question. As if oblivious of this he bent forward in his
+chair and followed Moxlow's questions and Langham's replies with the
+closest attention. And as he watched Langham, so Gilmore watched him.
+
+"That will do, Mr. Langham. Thank you," said Moxlow at last.
+
+North felt sure he would be the next witness, and he was not mistaken.
+Moxlow's examination, however, was along lines quite different from
+those he had anticipated. The prosecuting attorney's questions wholly
+concerned themselves with the sale of the gas bonds to McBride; each
+detail of that transaction was gone into, but a very positive sense of
+relief had come to North. This was not what he had expected and dreaded,
+and he answered Moxlow's queries frankly, eagerly, for where his
+relations with the old merchant were under discussion he had nothing to
+hide. Finally Moxlow turned from him with a characteristic gesture.
+
+"That's all," he said.
+
+Again his glance wandered over the room. It became fixed on a grayish
+middle-aged man seated at Gilmore's elbow.
+
+"Thomas Nelson," he called.
+
+This instantly revived North's apprehensions. Nelson was the janitor of
+the building in which he had roomed. He asked himself what could be
+Moxlow's purpose in examining him.
+
+There was just one thing North feared, and that--the bringing of Evelyn
+Langham's name into the case. How this could happen he did not see, but
+the law dug its own channels and sometimes they went far enough afield.
+While this was passing through his mind, Nelson was sworn and Moxlow
+began his examination.
+
+Mr. Nelson was in charge of the building on the corner of Main Street
+and the Square,--he referred to the brick building on the southeast
+corner? The witness answered in the affirmative, and Moxlow's next
+question brought out the fact that for some weeks the building had had
+only two tenants; John North and Andrew Gilmore.
+
+What was the exact nature of his duties? The witness could hardly say;
+he was something of a carpenter for one thing, and at the present time
+was making certain repairs in the vacant store-room on the ground floor.
+Did he take care of the entrance and the two halls? Yes. Had he
+anything to do with the rooms of the two tenants on the first floor?
+Yes. What?
+
+Sometimes he swept and dusted them and he was supposed to look after the
+fires. He carried up the coal, Moxlow suggested? Yes. He carried out the
+ashes? Again yes. Moxlow paused for a moment. Was he the only person who
+ever carried out the ashes? Yes. What did he do with the ashes? He
+emptied them into a barrel that stood in the yard back of the building.
+And what became of them then? Whenever necessary, the barrel was carted
+away and emptied. How long did it usually take to fill the barrel? At
+this season of the year one or two weeks. When was it emptied last? A
+week ago, perhaps, the witness was not quite sure about the day, but it
+was either Monday or Tuesday of the preceding week. And how often did
+the ashes from the fireplaces in Mr. North's and Mr. Gilmore's rooms
+find their way into the barrel? Every morning he cleaned out the grates
+the first thing, and usually before Mr. North or Mr. Gilmore were up.
+
+Again Moxlow paused and glanced over the room. He must have been aware
+that to his eager audience the connection between Mr. North's and Mr.
+Gilmore's fireplaces and the McBride murder, was anything but clear.
+
+"Did you empty the ashes from the fireplaces in the apartments occupied
+by Mr. North and Mr. Gilmore on Friday morning?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; that is, I took up the ashes in Mr. North's rooms."
+
+"But not in Mr. Gilmore's?"
+
+"No, sir, I didn't go into his rooms Friday morning."
+
+"Why was that,--was there any reason for it?"
+
+"Yes, I knew that Mr. Gilmore's rooms had not been occupied Thursday
+night; that was the night of the murder, and he was at McBride's house,"
+explained the witness.
+
+"But you emptied the grate in Mr. North's rooms?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And disposed of the ashes in the usual way?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"In the barrel in the yard back of the building?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did you notice anything peculiar about the ashes from Mr. North's rooms
+on Friday morning?"
+
+The witness looked puzzled.
+
+"Hadn't Mr. North burnt a good many papers in his grate?"
+
+"Oh, yes, but then he was going away."
+
+"That will do,--you are excused," interposed Moxlow quickly.
+
+The sheriff was next sworn. Without interruption from Moxlow he told his
+story. He had made a thorough search of the ash barrel described by the
+witness Thomas Nelson, and had come upon a number of charred fragments
+of paper.
+
+"We think these may be of interest to the coroner's jury," said Moxlow
+quietly.
+
+He drew a small pasteboard box from an inner pocket of his coat and
+carefully arranged its contents on the table before him. In all there
+were half a dozen scraps of charred or torn paper displayed; one or two
+of these fragments were bits of envelopes on which either a part or all
+of the name was still decipherable. North, from where he sat, was able
+to recognize a number of these as letters which he had intended to
+destroy that last night in his rooms; but the refuse from his grate and
+the McBride murder still seemed poles apart; he could imagine no
+possible connection.
+
+The president of Mount Hope's first national bank was the next witness
+called. He was asked by Moxlow to examine a Mount Hope Gas Company bond,
+and then the prosecuting attorney placed in his hands a triangular piece
+of paper which he selected from among the other fragments on the table.
+
+"Mr. Harden, will you kindly tell the jury of what, in your opinion,
+that bit of paper in your hand was once a part?" said Moxlow.
+
+Very deliberately the banker put on his glasses, and then with equal
+deliberation began a careful examination of the scrap of paper.
+
+"Well?" said Moxlow.
+
+"A second, please!" said the banker.
+
+But the seconds grew into minutes before he was ready to risk an
+opinion.
+
+"We are waiting on you, Mr. Harden," said Moxlow at length.
+
+"I should say that this is a marginal fragment of a Gas Company bond,"
+said the banker slowly. "Indeed there can be no doubt on the point. The
+paper is the same, and these lines in red ink are a part of the
+decoration that surrounds the printed matter. No,--there is no doubt in
+my mind as to what this paper is."
+
+"What part of the bond is it?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"The lower right-hand corner," replied the banker promptly. "That is why
+I hesitated to identify it; with this much of the upper left-hand corner
+for instance, I should not have been in doubt."
+
+"Excused," said Moxlow briefly.
+
+The room became blank before John North's eyes as he realized that a
+chain of circumstantial evidence was connecting him with the McBride
+murder. He glanced about at a score of men--witnesses, officials, and
+jury, and felt their sudden doubt of him, as intangibly but as certainly
+as he felt the dead presence just beyond the closed door.
+
+"We have one other witness," said Moxlow.
+
+And Joe Montgomery, seeming to understand that he was this witness,
+promptly quitted his chair at the back of the room and, cap in hand,
+slouched forward and was duly sworn by the coroner.
+
+If Mr. Montgomery had shown promptness he had also evinced uneasiness,
+since his fear of the law was as rock-ribbed as his respect for it. He
+was not unfamiliar with courts, though never before had he appeared in
+the character of a witness; and he had told himself many times that day
+that the business in which he had allowed Mr. Gilmore to involve him
+carried him far behind his depths. Now his small blue eyes slid round in
+their sockets somewhat fearfully until they rested on Mr. Gilmore, who
+had just taken up his position at Marshall Langham's elbow. The gambler
+frowned and the handy-man instantly shifted his gaze. But the
+prosecuting attorney's first questions served to give Joe a measure of
+ease; this was transitory, however, as he seemed to stand alone in the
+presence of some imminent personal danger when Moxlow asked:
+
+"Where were you on the night of the twenty-seventh of November at six
+o'clock?"
+
+Joe stole a haunted glance in the direction of Gilmore. Moxlow repeated
+his question.
+
+"Boss, I was in White's woodshed," answered Montgomery.
+
+"Tell the jury what you saw," said Moxlow.
+
+"Well, I seen a good deal," evaded the handy-man, shaking his great
+head.
+
+"Go on!" urged Moxlow impatiently.
+
+"It was this way," said Joe. "I was lookin' out into the alley through a
+crack in the small door where they put in the coal; right across the
+alley is the back of McBride's store and the sheds about his yard--"
+the handy-man paused and mopped his face with his ragged cap.
+
+At the opposite end of the room Gilmore placed a hand on Langham's arm.
+The lawyer had uttered a smothered exclamation and had made a movement
+as if about to quit his seat. The gambler pushed him back.
+
+"Sit tight, Marsh!" he muttered between his teeth.
+
+Mr. Montgomery, taking stock of his courage, prepared to adventure
+further with his testimony.
+
+"All at once as I stood by that door lookin' out into the alley, I heard
+a kind of noise in old man McBride's yard. It sounded like something
+heavy was bein' scraped across the frozen ground, say a box or barrel.
+Then I seen a man's derby hat come over the edge of the shed, and next
+the man who was under that hat drawed himself up; he come up slow and
+cautious until he was where he could throw himself over on to the roof.
+He done that, squatted low, and slid down the roof toward the alley.
+There was some snow and he slid easy. He was lookin' about all the time
+like he wasn't anxious to be seen. Well, boss, he never seen me, and he
+never seen no one else, so he dropped off, kind of givin' himself a
+shove out from the eaves, and fetched up against White's woodshed. He
+was pantin' like he'd run a mile, and I heard him say in a whisper, 'Oh,
+my God!'--just like that,--'Oh, my God!'" The handy-man paused with this
+grotesque mimicry of terror.
+
+"And then?" prompted Moxlow, in the breathless silence.
+
+"And then he took off up the alley as if all hell was whoopin' after
+him!"
+
+Again Montgomery's ragged cap served him in lieu of a handkerchief, and
+as he swabbed his blotched and purple face he shot a swift furtive
+glance in Gilmore's direction. So far he had told only the truth, but he
+was living in terror of Moxlow's next question.
+
+"Can you describe the man who crossed the roof,--for instance, how was
+he dressed?" said Moxlow, with slow deliberation.
+
+"He had on a derby hat and a dark overcoat," answered Montgomery after a
+moment's pause.
+
+He was speaking for Gilmore now, and his grimy lists closed convulsively
+about the arms of his chair.
+
+"Did you see his face?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"Yes--" the monosyllable was spoken unwillingly, but with a kind of
+dogged resolution.
+
+"Was it a face you knew?"
+
+Montgomery looked at Gilmore, whose fierce insistent glance was bent
+compellingly on him. The recollection of the gambler's threats and
+promises flashed through his mind.
+
+"Was it a face you knew?" repeated Moxlow.
+
+The handy-man gave him a sudden glare.
+
+"Yes," he said in a throaty whisper.
+
+"How could you tell in the dark?"
+
+[Illustration: "Then I seen a man's derby hat come over the edge of the
+shed."]
+
+"It wasn't so terrible dark, with the snow on the ground. And I was
+so close to him I could have put an apple in his pocket," Joe explained.
+
+"Who was the man?" asked Moxlow.
+
+"I thought he looked like John North," said Montgomery.
+
+There was the silence of death in the room.
+
+"You thought it was John North?" began Moxlow.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When he spoke, you thought you recognized North's voice?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Were you sure?"
+
+"I was pretty sure, boss--"
+
+"Only pretty sure?"
+
+"I thought it was Mr. North,--it looked like Mr. North, and I thought it
+was him,--I thought so then and I think so now," said Montgomery
+desperately.
+
+"Are you willing to swear positively that it was John North?" demanded
+Moxlow.
+
+"No--" said the handy-man, "No,--I only say I thought it was John North.
+He looked like John North, and I thought it was John North,--I'd have
+said it was John North, but it all happened in a minute. I wasn't
+thinkin' I'd ever have to say who it was I seen on the shed!"
+
+"But your first distinct impression was that it was John North?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You have known John North for years?"
+
+"All his life."
+
+"Had you seen him recently?"
+
+"I seen him Thanksgiving day along about four o'clock crossing the
+Square."
+
+"How was he dressed, did you notice?"
+
+"He was dressed like the man in the alley,--he had on a black derby hat
+and a dark brown overcoat."
+
+"That's all," said Moxlow quietly.
+
+The coroner and the jury drew aside and began a whispered consultation.
+In the vitiated atmosphere of that overcrowded room, heavy as it was
+with the stifling heat and palpably dense with the escaping smoke from
+the cracked wood-stove, men coughed nervously with every breath they
+drew, but their sense of physical discomfort was unheeded in their tense
+interest in the developments of the last few moments. The jury's
+deliberation was brief and then the coroner announced its verdict.
+
+North heard the doctor's halting words without at once grasping their
+meaning. A long moment of silence followed, and then a man coughed, and
+then another, and another; this seemed to break the spell, for suddenly
+the room buzzed with eager whisperings.
+
+North's first definite emotion was one of intense astonishment. Were
+they mad? But the faces turned toward him expressed nothing beyond
+curiosity. His glance shifted to the official group by the table. These
+good-natured commonplace men who, whether they liked him or not, had
+invariably had a pleasant word for him, instantly took on an air of grim
+aloofness. Conklin, the fat jolly sheriff; the coroner; Moxlow, the
+prosecuting attorney in his baggy trousers and seam-shining coat,--why,
+he had known these men all his life, he had met them daily,--what did
+they mean by suspecting him! The mere suspicion was a monstrous wrong!
+His face reddened; he glanced about him haughtily.
+
+Now at a sign from the coroner, Conklin placed his fat hands on the arms
+of his chair and slowly drew himself out of its depths, then he crossed
+to North. The young fellow rose, and turned a pale face toward him.
+
+"John," said the sheriff gently, "I have an unpleasant duty to perform."
+
+In spite of himself the pallor deepened on North's face.
+
+"I understand," he said in a voice that was low and none too steady.
+
+During this scene Moxlow's glance had been centered on North in a fixed
+stare of impersonal curiosity, now he turned with quick nervous decision
+and snatching up his shabby hat from the table, left the room.
+
+Langham had preceded him by a few moments, escaping unobserved when
+there were eyes only for North.
+
+"I am ready, Conklin."
+
+And a moment later North and the sheriff passed out into the twilight.
+Neither spoke until they came to the court-house Square.
+
+"We'll go in this way, John!" said the sheriff in a tone that was meant
+to be encouraging, but failed.
+
+They ascended the court-house steps, and went down the long corridor to
+the rear of the building. Here they passed out through wide doors and
+into a narrow yard that separated the court-house from the jail.
+Crossing this sandy strip they entered the sheriff's office. Conklin
+paused; North gazed at him inquiringly.
+
+"It's too bad, John," said the sheriff.
+
+Then without further words he led North to a door opposite that by which
+they had entered. It opened on a long brick-paved passageway, at the end
+of which was a flight of narrow stairs. Ascending these North found
+himself in another long hall. Conklin paused before the first of three
+doors on the right and pushed it open.
+
+"I guess this will do, John!" he said.
+
+North stepped quickly in and glanced about him. The room held an iron
+bedstead, a wooden chair and, by the window which overlooked the jail
+yard and an alley beyond, a wash-stand with a tin basin and pitcher.
+
+"Say, ain't you going to see a lawyer?" asked the sheriff. "He may be
+able to get you out of this, you can't tell--"
+
+"Can you send a message to young Watt Harbison for me?" interrupted
+North.
+
+"Certainly, but you don't call him much of a lawyer, do you? I tell you,
+John, you want a _good_ lawyer; what's the matter with Marsh Langham?"
+
+"Watt will do for the present. He can tell me the one or two things I
+need to know now," rejoined North indifferently.
+
+"All right, I'll send for him then."
+
+The sheriff quitted the room, closing and locking the door after him.
+North heard his footsteps die out in the long passage. At last he was
+alone! He threw himself down on the cot for manhood seemed to forsake
+him.
+
+"My God,--Elizabeth--" he groaned and buried his face in his hands.
+
+The law had lifted a sinister finger and leveled it at him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+LIGHT IN DARKNESS
+
+
+The expression on General Herbert's face was one of mingled doubt and
+impatience.
+
+"You must be mistaken, Thompson!" he was saying to his foreman, who had,
+with the coming of night, returned from an errand in town.
+
+"General, there's no mistake; every one was talking about it! Looks like
+the police had something to go on, too--"
+
+He hesitated, suddenly remembering that John North had been a frequent
+guest at Idle Hour.
+
+"I had heard that Mr. North was wanted as a witness," observed the
+general.
+
+"No, they say Moxlow had his eye on him from the start!" rejoined the
+foreman with repressed enthusiasm for Moxlow.
+
+The general sensed the enthusiasm and was affected unpleasantly by it.
+
+"It would be a great pity if Mr. Moxlow should be so unfortunate as to
+make a fool of himself!" he commented with unusual acidity. "What else
+did you hear?"
+
+"Not much, General, only just what I've told you--that they've arrested
+North, and that young Watt Harbison's been trying to get him out on
+bail, but they've refused to accept bond in his case. Don't that look
+like they thought the evidence was pretty strong against him--"
+
+"Well, they, might have arrested you or me," said the general. "That
+signifies nothing."
+
+He moved off in the direction of the house, and Thompson, after a
+backward glance at his retreating figure, entered the barn. Out of sight
+of his foreman, the general's sturdy pace lagged. That young man had
+been at Idle Hour entirely too often; he had thought so all along, and
+now he was very sure of it!
+
+"This comes of being too kind," he muttered.
+
+Then he paused suddenly--but no, that was absurd--utterly absurd;
+Elizabeth would have told him! He was certain of this, for had she not
+told him all her secrets? But suppose--suppose--and again he put the
+idea from him.
+
+He found Elizabeth in the small, daintily furnished sitting-room which
+Mrs. Herbert had called her "boudoir", and seated himself, none too
+gently, in a fragile gilt chair which his bulk of bone and muscle
+threatened to wreck. Elizabeth glanced up from _Their Wedding Journey_,
+which she was reading for the second time.
+
+"What is it, father?" she asked, for his feeling of doubt and annoyance
+was plainly shown in his expressive face.
+
+"Thompson has just come out from town--he says that John North has been
+arrested for the McBride murder--"
+
+The book slipped from Elizabeth's hand and fell to the floor; the smile
+with which she had welcomed her father faded from her lips; she gazed at
+him with pale face and wide eyes. The general instantly regretted that
+he had spoken with such cruel abruptness.
+
+"You don't think it is true?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+"Thompson seemed to know what he was talking about."
+
+"It's monstrous!" she cried.
+
+"If North is innocent--" began the general.
+
+"Father!" She regarded him with a look of horror and astonishment. "You
+don't like him! It's that, isn't it?" she added after a moment's
+silence.
+
+"I don't like any one who gets into a scrape such as this!" replied the
+general with miserable and unnecessary heat.
+
+"But it wasn't _his_ fault--he couldn't help it!"
+
+"I don't suppose he could," replied her father grimly.
+
+She rose and came close to his side.
+
+"Father!" she said in a tone of entreaty, placing a hand on his arm.
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+There was both tenderness and concern in his keen gray eyes as he
+glanced up into her troubled face.
+
+"I want you to go to him--to Mr. North, I mean. I want you to tell him
+how sorry you are; I want him to know--I--" she paused uncertainly.
+
+Perhaps for the first time in her life she was not quite sure of her
+father's sympathy. She dreaded his man's judgment in this crisis.
+
+"Now seriously, Elizabeth, don't you think I'd better keep away from
+him? I can do nothing--"
+
+"Oh, how cowardly that would be!" she cried. "How cowardly!"
+
+The old general winced at this. He was far from being a coward, but
+appearances had their value in his eyes; and even, in its least serious
+aspect, young North's predicament was not pleasant to contemplate.
+
+"But there is nothing I can do, Elizabeth; why should I become
+involved?" he urged.
+
+"Then you must go to him from me!" she cried.
+
+"Child--child; what are you saying!" cried the general.
+
+"Either you must go to him, or I shall go!" she said with fine firmness.
+
+Her father groaned.
+
+"Be frank with me, Elizabeth. Has North ever told you that he cared for
+you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Before he went away--I mean that last night he was here."
+
+"I feared as much!" he muttered. "And you, dear?" he continued gently.
+
+"He said we might have to wait a long time--or I should have told you!
+He went away because he was too poor--"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Do you care for him, Elizabeth?" her father asked at length. "Do you
+wish me to understand that you are committed--are--"
+
+"Yes," she answered quite simply.
+
+"You are sure it is not just pity--you are sure, Elizabeth? For you
+know, right or wrong, he will probably come out of this with his
+reputation smirched."
+
+"But he is _innocent_!"
+
+"That is not quite the point!" urged the general. "We must see things as
+they are. You must understand what it may mean to you in the future, to
+have given your love to a man who has fallen under such suspicion. There
+will always be those who will remember this against him."
+
+"But _I_ shall know!" she said proudly.
+
+"And that will be enough--you will ask no more than that, Elizabeth?"
+
+"If my faith in him has never been shaken, could I ask more?"
+
+He looked at her wistfully. Her courage he comprehended. It was fine and
+true, like her sweet unspoiled youth; in its presence he felt a sudden
+sense of age and loneliness. He asked himself, had he lived beyond his
+own period of generous enthusiasm?
+
+"It would be a poor kind of friendship, a poorer kind of love, if we did
+not let him know at once that this has not changed our--our, regard for
+him!" she said softly.
+
+"It is not your ready sympathy; you are quite certain it is not that,
+Elizabeth?"
+
+"I am sure, father--sure of myself as I am of him! You say he has been
+arrested, does that mean--" and she hesitated.
+
+"It means, my dear, that he is in jail," answered the general as he came
+slowly to his feet.
+
+She gave a little cry, and running to him hid her face against his arm.
+
+"In jail!" she moaned, and her imagination and her ignorance clothed the
+thought with indescribable horrors.
+
+"Understand, dear, he isn't even indicted yet and he may not be! It's
+bad enough, of course, but it might be a great deal worse. Now what am I
+to tell him for you?"
+
+"Wait," she said, slipping from his side. "I will write him--"
+
+"Write your letter then," said her father. "I'll order the horses at
+once," he added, as he quitted the room.
+
+Ten minutes later when he drove up from the stables, Elizabeth met him
+at the door.
+
+"After you have seen him, father, come home at once, won't you?" she
+said as she handed him her letter.
+
+"Yes, I am only going for this," he replied.
+
+It was plain that his errand had not grown less distasteful to him.
+Perhaps Elizabeth was aware of this, for she reached up and passed an
+arm about his neck.
+
+"I don't believe any girl ever had such a father!" she whispered softly.
+
+"I suppose I should not be susceptible to such manifest flattery," said
+the general, kissing her, "but I find I am! There, you keep up your
+courage! This old father of yours is a person of such excellent sense
+that he is going to aid and abet you in this most outrageous folly; I
+expect, even, that in time, my interest in this very foolish young man
+will be only second to your own, my dear!"
+
+As he drove away he turned in his seat to glance back at the graceful
+girlish figure standing in the shelter of Idle Hour's stone arched
+vestibule, and as he did so there was a flutter of something white,
+which assured him that her keen eyes were following him and would follow
+him until the distance and the closing darkness intervened, and hid him
+from her sight.
+
+"I hope it will come out all right!" he told himself and sighed.
+
+If it did _not_ come out all right, where was his peace of mind; where
+was the calm, where the long reposeful days he had so valued? But this
+thought he put from him as unworthy. After all Elizabeth's happiness
+was something he desired infinitely more than he desired his own. But
+why could it not have been some one else? Why was it North; what unkind
+fate had been busy there?
+
+"She sees more in him than I could ever see!" he said aloud, as he
+touched his horse with the whip.
+
+Twenty minutes later he drove up before the court-house, hitched and
+blanketed his horse, and passing around the building, now dark and
+deserted, reached the entrance to the jail. In the office he found
+Conklin at his desk. The sheriff was rather laboriously engaged in
+making the entry in his ledger of North's committal to his charge, a
+formality which, out of consideration for his prisoner's feelings, he
+had dispensed with at the time of the arrest.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. North. I suppose I may?" his visitor said, after he
+had shaken hands with Conklin.
+
+"Certainly, General! Want to go up, or shall I bring him down here to
+you?"
+
+"I'd prefer that--I'd much prefer that!" answered the general hastily.
+
+He felt that it would be something to tell Elizabeth that the interview
+had taken place in the sheriff's office.
+
+"All right, just as you say; have a chair." And Conklin left the room.
+
+The general glanced about him dubiously. Had it not been for his deep
+love for Elizabeth he could have wished himself anywhere else and
+charged with any other mission. He dropped heavily into a chair. North's
+arrest, and the results of that arrest as he now saw them in that
+cheerless atmosphere, loomed large before his mind's eye. He reflected
+that a trial for murder was a horrible and soul-racking experience. He
+devoutly and prayerfully hoped that it would not come to this in North's
+case.
+
+His meditation was broken in on by the sound of echoing steps in the
+brick-paved passageway, and then North and Conklin entered the room. On
+their entrance the general quitted his chair and advanced to meet the
+young fellow, whose hand he took in silence. The sheriff glanced from
+one to the other; and understanding that there might be something
+intimate and personal in their relation, he said:
+
+"I'll just step back into the building, General; when you and Mr. North
+have finished your talk, you can call me."
+
+"Thank you!" said General Herbert, and Conklin withdrew, leaving the two
+alone.
+
+There was an awkward pause as they faced each other. The older man was
+the first to speak.
+
+"I regret this!" he said at length.
+
+"Not more than I do!" rejoined North, with a fleeting sense of humor.
+
+He wondered what it was that had brought Elizabeth's father there.
+
+"What's the matter with Moxlow, anyhow?" the general demanded.
+
+He glanced sharply into North's face. He saw that the young fellow was
+rather pale, but otherwise his appearance was unchanged.
+
+"All the evidence seems to point my way," said North, and added a trifle
+nervously: "I don't understand it--it isn't clear to me by any means! It
+came so suddenly, and I was totally unprepared to meet the situation. I
+had talked to Moxlow in the morning, but he had let drop nothing that
+led me to suppose I was under suspicion. Of course I am not afraid. I
+know that it will come out all right in the end--"
+
+"Do you want anything, North? Is there anything I can do for you?" asked
+General Herbert almost roughly.
+
+"Thank you, but apparently there is nothing that any one can do just
+now," said North quietly.
+
+The color was creeping back into his face.
+
+"Well, we can't sit idle! Look here, you tried for bail, I understand?"
+
+"Yes, but it has been refused."
+
+"Do you know when the grand jury sits?"
+
+"Next week. Of course my hope is that it won't go beyond that; I don't
+see how it can!"
+
+"Why didn't you send for me at once?" asked the older man with
+increasing bruskness. He took a turn about the room. "What does it all
+mean? What do you know about McBride's death?" he continued, halting
+suddenly.
+
+"Absolutely nothing," said North.
+
+And for an instant the two men looked straight into each other's eyes.
+
+"You are sure you don't need anything--money, for instance?" the general
+asked, shifting his glance.
+
+"I am quite sure, but I am very grateful to you all the same--"
+
+"Of course the evidence against you is purely circumstantial?"
+
+"I believe so--yes," answered North. "But there are points I don't
+understand."
+
+"I am coming in to-morrow morning to see you, and talk the whole thing
+over with you, North."
+
+"I shall be very glad to talk matters over with you, General," said
+North.
+
+"I wish I could do something for you to-night!" the general said with
+real feeling, for he realized the long evening, and the longer night
+that were before the young fellow.
+
+There was a pause. The general could not bring himself to speak of
+Elizabeth, and North lacked the courage to ask concerning her.
+
+"I heard through one of my men of your arrest. He brought word of it to
+the farm," the farmer said at length.
+
+"Miss Herbert knows--of course you told her--"
+
+"Yes, North; yes, she knows!" her father replied. "She knows and she
+urged me to come!"
+
+He saw North's face light up with a sudden look of joy.
+
+"She urged you to come?" repeated North.
+
+"Yes--I think she would have come herself if I had not been willing."
+
+"I am glad she did not!" said North quickly.
+
+"Of course! I told her it would only distress you."
+
+"It would only distress her--which is all that is worth considering,"
+rejoined North.
+
+"That's so!" said the general, approaching the young man and resting a
+brown and muscular hand on his shoulder.
+
+"She has told you?" asked North.
+
+The older man nodded.
+
+"Yes, she's told me," he said briefly.
+
+"I can't ask if it was pleasant news at this time," said North. "What do
+you wish me to do?" he continued. "She must forget what was said that
+night, and I, too, will endeavor to forget--tell her that." He passed a
+shaking hand before his face.
+
+"I've a note here for you, North--" General Herbert was fumbling in his
+pocket--"from Elizabeth. Don't you be too quick to decide!"
+
+"With your permission," said North as he took the letter.
+
+He tore it open, and Elizabeth's father, watching him, saw the
+expression of his face change utterly, as the lines of tense repression
+faded from it. It was clear that for the moment all else was lost in his
+feeling of great and compelling happiness. Twice he read the letter
+before he could bring himself to replace it in its envelope. As he did
+so, he caught the general's eyes fixed on him. For a moment he
+hesitated, then he said with the frankness that was habitual to him:
+
+"I think you should know just what that letter means to me. It is brave
+and steadfast--just as she is; no, you were right, I can't decide--I
+won't!"
+
+"I wouldn't," said the general. There was a pause and then he added,
+"After all, it is not given to every woman to show just how deep her
+faith is in the man she loves. It would be too bad if you could not know
+that!"
+
+"The situation may become intolerable, General Herbert! Suppose I am
+held for the murder--suppose a long trial follows; think what she will
+suffer, the uncertainty, the awful doubt of the outcome, although she
+knows,--she must know I am innocent."
+
+"Of course, of course!" cried the general hastily, for these were points
+he did not wish to discuss.
+
+"It's a serious matter when you consider the possibility of an
+indictment," said North soberly enough.
+
+"That's true; yet we mustn't count the cost now, or at any future time.
+But I promised Elizabeth I'd come back at once. What shall I say to her,
+North?"
+
+"Tell her that her letter has changed the whole aspect of things for me.
+You must try to make her feel the fresh hope she has given me," John
+replied, extending his hand.
+
+"Conklin!" called the general. He took North's hand. "Good night; I'm
+infinitely sorry to leave you here, North, but I suppose it can't be
+helped--"
+
+The sheriff entered the room while he was yet speaking.
+
+"Finished your chat, General?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, thank you, Conklin. Good night. Good night, North," and
+Elizabeth's father hurried from the room.
+
+For a moment North stood silent, staring absently at the door that had
+just closed on the general's burly figure. He still held Elizabeth's
+letter in his hand. In fancy he was seeing her as she had bent above it,
+her face tender, compassionate; and then there rose the vision of that
+crowded room with its palpable atmosphere, its score of curious faces
+all turned toward him in eager expectation. In the midst of these
+unworthy surroundings, her face, beautiful and high bred, eluded him;
+the likeness, even as he saw it, was lost, nor could he call it back.
+
+Slowly but certainly that day's experience was fixing itself unalterably
+in his memory. He caught the pungent reek from the wood-stove, and
+mingling with it the odor of strong cheap tobacco filled his nostrils
+again; he was left with the very dregs of sordid shameful things.
+
+The sheriff touched him on the arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+THE GAMBLER'S THEORY
+
+
+Gilmore, leaving his apartment, paused to light a cigar, then sauntered
+down the steps and into the street. As he did so he saw Marshall Langham
+come from the post-office, half a block distant, and hurry across the
+Square. Gilmore strode after him.
+
+"Oh, say, Marsh, I want to see you!" he called when he had sufficiently
+reduced the distance that separated him from his friend.
+
+Instantly Langham paused, turning a not too friendly face toward the
+gambler.
+
+"You want to see me?" he asked.
+
+"Didn't I say so?" demanded Gilmore, as he gained a place at his side.
+"Where are you going, to the office?"
+
+"Yes, I have some letters to answer," and Langham quickened his pace.
+
+Gilmore kept his place at the lawyer's elbow. For a moment there was
+silence between them, and then Gilmore said:
+
+"You got away from McBride's in a hurry Saturday; why didn't you wait
+and see the finish?"
+
+Langham made no answer to this, and Gilmore, after another brief
+silence, turned on him with an unexpected question:
+
+"How would you like to be in North's shoes, Marsh?" As he spoke, the
+gambler rested a hand on Langham's shoulder. He felt him shrink from the
+physical contact. "Gives you a chill just to think of it, doesn't it?"
+he said. "I suppose Moxlow believes there's the making of a pretty
+strong case against him; eh, Marsh?"
+
+"I don't know; I can't tell what he thinks," said Langham briefly.
+
+"But in North's place, back there in the jail in one of those brand-new
+iron cages over the yard, how would you feel? That's what I want to
+know!"
+
+Langham met his glance for an instant and then his eyes fell. He sensed
+the insinuation that was back of Gilmore's words.
+
+"Can't you put yourself in his place, with the evidence, such as it is,
+all setting against you?"
+
+"I'm due at the office," said the lawyer suddenly.
+
+Gilmore took his arm.
+
+"If North didn't kill McBride, who did?" he persisted.
+
+"Why do you ask me such questions?" demanded Langham resentfully.
+
+"My lord--can't we consider the matter?" asked the gambler laughing.
+
+"What's the use? Here, I've got to go to the office, Andy--" and he
+sought to release himself, but Gilmore retained his hold.
+
+"I suppose you are going to see North?" he asked.
+
+Langham came to a sudden stop.
+
+"What's that?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"You have been his intimate for years; surely you are too good a friend
+to turn your back on him now!"
+
+"If he wants me, he'll send for me!" muttered Langham.
+
+"Do you mean you aren't _going_ to him, Marsh?" asked the gambler with
+well simulated astonishment.
+
+"He knows where I'm to be found," said Langham, striding forward again,
+"and, damn it, this is no concern of yours!"
+
+"Well, by thunder!" ejaculated Gilmore.
+
+"I don't need any points from you, Andy!" said Langham, with a sullen
+sidelong glance at his companion.
+
+They had crossed the Square, and Langham now halted at the curb.
+
+"Good-by, Andy!" he said, and shook himself free of the other's
+detaining hand.
+
+"Hold on a minute, Marsh!" objected Gilmore.
+
+"Well, what is it, can't you see I am in a hurry?"
+
+"Oh, nothing here, Marsh--" and striding forward, Gilmore disappeared in
+the building before which they had paused.
+
+For an instant Langham hesitated, and then he followed the gambler.
+
+A step or two in advance of him, Gilmore mounted the stairs, and passing
+down the hall entered Langham's office. Langham followed him into the
+room; he closed the door, and without a glance at Gilmore removed his
+hat and overcoat and hung them up on a nail back of the door; the
+gambler meanwhile had drawn an easy chair toward the open grate at the
+far end of the room, before which he now established himself with
+apparent satisfaction.
+
+"I suppose the finding of the coroner's jury doesn't amount to much," he
+presently said but without looking in Langham's direction.
+
+The lawyer did not answer him. He crossed to his desk which filled the
+space between the two windows overlooking the Square.
+
+"You're damn social!" snarled Gilmore over his shoulder.
+
+"I told you I was busy," said Langham, and he began to finger the papers
+on his desk.
+
+Gilmore swung around in his chair and faced him.
+
+"So you won't see him--North, I mean?" he queried. "Well, you're a hell
+of a friend, Marsh. You've been as thick as thieves, and now when he's
+up against it good and hard, you're the first man to turn your back on
+him!"
+
+Seating himself, Langham took up his pen and began to write. Gilmore
+watched him in silence for a moment, a smile of lazy tolerance on his
+lips.
+
+"Suppose North is acquitted, Marsh; suppose the grand jury doesn't hold
+him," he said at length; "will the search for the murderer go on?"
+
+The pen slipped from Langham's fingers to the desk.
+
+"Look here, I don't want to discuss North or his affairs with you. It's
+nothing to me; can't you get that through your head?"
+
+"As his friend--" began Gilmore.
+
+"Get rid of that notion, too!"
+
+"That's what I wanted to hear you say, Marsh! So you're not his friend?"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Langham briefly, and his shaking fingers searched among
+the papers on his desk for the pen he had just dropped.
+
+"So you're not his friend any more?" repeated Gilmore slowly. "Well, I
+expect when a fellow gets hauled up for murder it's asking a good deal
+of his friends to stand by him! Do you know, Marsh, I'm getting an
+increased respect for the law; it puts the delinquents to such a hell of
+a lot of trouble. It's a good thing to let alone! I'm thinking mighty
+seriously of cutting out the games up at my rooms; what would you think
+of my turning respectable, Marsh? Would you be among the first to extend
+the warm right hand of fellowship?"
+
+"Oh, you are respectable enough, Andy!" said Langham.
+
+He seemed vastly relieved at the turn the conversation had taken. He
+leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands in his trousers pockets.
+
+"Say, why can't I put myself where I want to be? What's the matter with
+my style, anyhow? It's as good as yours any day, Marsh; and no one ever
+saw me drunk--that is a whole lot more than can be said of you; and yet
+you stand in with the best people, you go to houses where I'd be thrown
+out if I as much as stuck my nose inside the door!"
+
+"Your style's all right, Andy!" Langham hastened to assure him.
+
+"Well, it's as good as yours any day!"
+
+"Better!" said Langham, laughing.
+
+"Well, what's the matter with it, then?" persisted Gilmore.
+
+"There's a good deal of it sometimes, it's rather oppressive--" said the
+lawyer.
+
+"I'll fix that," said Gilmore shortly.
+
+"I would if I wanted what you seem to think you want," replied Langham
+chuckling.
+
+"Marsh, I'm dead serious; I'm sick of being outside all the good things.
+I know plenty of respectable fellows, fellows like you; but I want to
+know respectable women; why can't I?"
+
+"If you hanker for it, you can; it's up to you, Andy," said Langham.
+
+The gambler appeared very ingenuous in this new rôle of his.
+
+"Look here, Marsh, I've never asked anything of you, and you must admit
+that I've done you one or two good turns; now I'm going to ask a favor
+of you and I don't expect to be refused; fact is, I ain't going to take
+a refusal--"
+
+"What is it, Andy?" asked Langham cautiously, "I want you to introduce
+me to your wife."
+
+"The hell you do!" ejaculated Langham.
+
+The gambler's brow darkened.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" he demanded angrily.
+
+"Nothing, I was only thinking of Mrs. Langham's probable attitude in the
+matter, that was all."
+
+"You mean you think she won't want to meet me?" and in spite of himself
+Gilmore's voice sounded strained and unnatural.
+
+"I'm _sure_ she won't," said Langham with cruel candor.
+
+"Well," observed Gilmore coolly, "I'm going to put my case in your
+hands, Marsh; you come to my rooms, you drink my whisky, and smoke my
+cigars and borrow my money; now I'm going to make a new deal with you.
+I'm going to know your wife. I like her style--she and I'll get on fine
+together, once we know each other. You make it plain to her that I'm
+your friend, your best friend, about your _only_ friend!"
+
+"You fool--" began Langham.
+
+Gilmore quitted his chair at a bound and strode to Langham's side.
+
+"None of that, Marsh!" he protested sternly, placing a heavy hand on
+Langham's shoulder. "I see we got to understand each other, you and me!
+You don't take hints; I have to bang it into you with a club or you
+don't see what I'm driving at--"
+
+"I've paid you all I owe you, Gilmore!" said Langham conclusively. "You
+can't hold that over me any longer."
+
+"I don't want to!" retorted Gilmore quietly.
+
+"You kept your thumb on me good and hard while you could!"
+
+"Not half so hard as I am going to if you try to get away from me now--"
+
+"What do you mean by these threats?" cried Langham.
+
+The gambler laughed in his face.
+
+"You've paid me all you owe me, but I want to ask you just one question.
+Where did you get the money?"
+
+"That," said Langham, steadying himself by a mighty effort, "is none of
+your business!"
+
+"Think not?" and again Gilmore laughed, but before his eyes, fierce,
+compelling, Langham's glance wavered and fell.
+
+"I got the money from my father," he muttered huskily.
+
+"You're a liar!" said the gambler. "I know where you got that money, and
+you know I know." There was a long pause, and then Gilmore jerked out:
+
+"But don't you worry about that. In your own fashion you have been my
+friend, and it's dead against my creed to go back on a friend unless he
+tries to throw me down; so don't you make the mistake of doing that, or
+I'll spoil your luck! You think you got North where you want him; don't
+you be too sure of that! There's one person, just one, who can clear
+him, at least there's only one who is likely to try, and I'll tell you
+who it is--it's your wife--" For an instant Langham thought Gilmore had
+taken leave of his senses, but the gambler's next question filled him
+with vague terror.
+
+"Where was she late that afternoon, do you know?"
+
+"What afternoon?" asked Langham.
+
+Gilmore gave him a contemptuous glance.
+
+"Thanksgiving afternoon, the afternoon of the murder," he snapped.
+
+"She was at my father's, she dined there," said Langham slowly.
+
+"That may be true enough, but she didn't get there until after six
+o'clock--I'll bet you what you like on that, and I'll bet you, too, that
+I know where she was from five to six. Do you take me up? No? Of course
+you don't! Well, I'll tell you all the same. She was in North's rooms--"
+
+"You lie, damn you!" cried Langham, springing to his feet. He made an
+ineffectual effort to seize Gilmore by the throat, but the gambler
+thrust him aside with apparent ease.
+
+"Don't try that or you'll get the worst of it, Marsh; you've been
+soaking up too much whisky to be any good at that game with me!" said
+Gilmore.
+
+[Illustration: "She was in North's rooms--"]
+
+His manner was cool and determined. He took Langham roughly by the
+shoulders and threw him back in his chair. The lawyer's face was ghastly
+in the gray light that streamed in through the windows, but he had
+lost his sense of personal fear in another and deeper and less selfish
+emotion. Yet he realized the gambler's power over him, the power of a
+perfect and absolute knowledge of his most secret and hidden concerns.
+
+Gilmore surveyed him with a glance of quiet scorn.
+
+"It was about half past five when she turned up at North's rooms. He had
+just come up the stairs ahead of her; I imagine he knew she was coming.
+I guess I could tell you a few things you don't know! All during the
+summer and fall they've been meeting on the quiet--" he laughed
+insolently. "Oh, you have been all kinds of a fool, Marsh; I guess
+you've got on to the fact at last. And I don't wonder you are anxious to
+see North hang, and that you won't go near him; I'd kill him if I stood
+in your place. But maybe we can fix it so the law will do that job for
+you. It seems to have the whip-hand with him just now. Well, he was the
+whole thing with your wife when she went away this fall and then he
+began to take up with the general's girl--sort of to keep his hand in, I
+suppose--the damn fool! For she ain't a patch on your wife. I guess Mrs.
+Langham had been tipped off to this new deal--that's what brought her
+back to Mount Hope in such a hurry, and she went to his rooms to have it
+out with him and learn just where she stood. I was in my bedroom and I
+could hear them talking through the partition. It wasn't peaches and
+cream, for she was rowing all right!"
+
+"It's a lie!" cried Langham, and he strove to rise to his feet, but
+Gilmore's strong hand kept him in his chair.
+
+"No, I don't lie, Marsh, you ought to know that by this time; but
+there's just one point you want to get through your head; with your
+wife's help North can prove an alibi. He won't want to compromise her,
+or himself with the Herbert girl, for that matter; but how long do you
+think he's going to keep his mouth shut with the gallows staring him in
+the face? I'm willing to go as far in this matter as the next, but you
+got to do your part and pay the price, or I'll throw you down so hard
+you'll never get over the jar!" His heavy jaws protruded. "Now, I've a
+notion I want to know your wife. I like her style. I guess you can trust
+her with me--you ain't afraid of that, are you?"
+
+"Take your hands off me!" cried Langham, struggling fiercely.
+
+He tore at the gambler's wrists, but Gilmore only laughed his
+tantalizing laugh.
+
+"Oh, come, Marsh, let's get back to the main point. If North's indicted
+and your wife's summoned as a witness, she's got to chip in with us,
+she's got to deny that she was in his room that day--you got to see to
+that, I can't do everything--"
+
+"On your word--"
+
+"Well, you needn't quote me to her--it wouldn't help my standing with
+her--but ask her where she was between half past five and six the day of
+the murder; and mind this, you must make her understand she's got to
+keep still no matter what happens! Put aside the notion that North won't
+summon her; wait until he is really in danger and then see how quick he
+squeals!"
+
+"She may have gone to his rooms," said Langham chokingly, "but that
+doesn't prove anything wrong--"
+
+"Oh, come, Marsh, you ain't fool enough to feel that way about it--"
+
+"Let me up, Gilmore!"
+
+"No, I won't; I'm trying to make you see things straight for your own
+good. What's the matter, anyhow; don't you and your wife get on?"
+
+Langham's face was purple with rage and shame, while his eyes burned
+with a murderous hate. Rude hands had uncovered his hidden sore; yet
+ruder speech was making mock of the disgraceful secret. It was of his
+wife that this coarse bully was speaking! That what he said was probably
+true--Evelyn herself had admitted much--did not in the least ease the
+blow that had crushed his pride and self-respect. He lay back in his
+chair, limp and panting under Gilmore's strong hands. Where was his own
+strength of heart and arm that he should be left powerless in this
+moment of unspeakable degradation?
+
+"It behooves you to do something more than soak up whisky," said the
+gambler. "You must find out what took your wife to North's rooms, and
+you must make her keep quiet no matter what happens. If you go about it
+right it ought to be easy, for they had some sort of a row and he's
+mixed up with the Herbert girl; you got that to go on. Now, the question
+is, is she mad enough to see him go to the penitentiary or hang without
+opening her mouth to save him? Come, you should know something about her
+by this time; I would, if I had been married to her as long as you
+have."
+
+Suddenly he released Langham and fell back a step. The lawyer staggered
+to his feet, adjusting his collar and cravat which Gilmore's grasp on
+his throat had disarranged. He glanced about him with a vague notion of
+obtaining some weapon that would put him on an equality with his more
+powerful antagonist, but nothing offered, and he took a step toward the
+door.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Marsh," said the gambler coldly. "I'm going to change
+my tactics with you. I'm not going to wear myself out keeping your nose
+pointed in the right direction; you must do something for yourself, you
+drunken fool!"
+
+Langham took another step toward the door, but his eyes--the starting
+bloodshot eyes of a hunted animal--still searched the room for some
+weapon. Except for the heavy iron poker by the grate, there was nothing
+that would serve his purpose, and he must pass the gambler to reach
+that. Still fumbling with his collar he paused irresolutely, midway of
+the room. Pride and self-respect would have taken him from the place but
+hate and fear kept him there.
+
+Gilmore threw himself down in a chair before the fire and lit a cigar.
+In spite of himself Langham watched him, fascinated. There was such
+conscious power and mastery in everything the gambler did, that he felt
+the various purposes that were influencing him collapse with miserable
+futility. What was the use of struggling?
+
+"You can do as you blame please in this matter, Marsh," said the gambler
+at length. "I haven't meant to offend you or insult you, but if you want
+to see it that way--all right, it suits me. You needn't look about you,
+for you won't find any sledges here; you ought to know that."
+
+"What do you mean--" asked Langham in a whisper.
+
+"Draw up a chair and sit down, Marsh, and we'll thrash this thing out if
+it takes all night. Here, have a cigar!" for Langham had drawn forward a
+chair. With trembling fingers he took the cigar the gambler handed him.
+"Now light up," said Gilmore. He watched Langham strike a match, watched
+his shaking hands as he brought its flame to the cigar's end. "That's
+better," he said as the first puff of smoke left Langham's colorless
+lips. "So you think you want to know what I mean, eh? Well, I'm going to
+take you into my confidence, Marsh, and just remember you can't
+possibly reach the poker without having me on top of you before you get
+to it! You were pretty sober for you the afternoon of the murder, not
+more than half shot, we'll say, but later on when you hunted me up at
+the McBride house, you were as drunk as you will ever be, and slobbering
+all sorts of foolishness!"
+
+He puffed his cigar in silence for a moment. Langham's had gone out and
+he was nervously chewing the end of it.
+
+"What did I say?" he asked at length.
+
+"Oh, all sorts of damn nonsense. You're smart enough sober, but get you
+drunk and you ain't fit to be at large!"
+
+"What did I say?" repeated Langham.
+
+"Better let me forget that," rejoined Gilmore significantly. "And look
+here, Marsh, I was sweating blood Saturday when they had Nelson on the
+stand, but it's clear he had no suspicion that my rooms were occupied on
+the night of the murder. You were blue about the gills while Moxlow was
+questioning him, and I don't wonder; as I tell you, I wasn't comfortable
+myself, for I knew well enough how that bit of burnt bond got into the
+ash barrel--"
+
+"Hush! For God's sake--" whispered Langham in uncontrollable terror.
+
+Gilmore laughed.
+
+"My lord, man, you got to keep your nerve! Look here, Mount Hope ain't
+going to talk of anything but the McBride murder; you are going to hear
+it from morning to night, and that's one of the reasons you got to keep
+sober. You've done your best so far to queer yourself, and unless you
+listen to reason you may do it yet."
+
+"I don't know what you mean--" said Langham.
+
+"Don't you, Marsh? Well, I got just one more surprise in store for you,
+but I'll keep it to myself a while longer before I spring it on you."
+
+He was thinking of Joe Montgomery's story; if Langham did not prove
+readily tractable, that should be the final weapon with which he would
+beat him into submission. Presently he said:
+
+"I've all along had my own theory about old man McBride's murder, and
+now I'm going to see what you think of it, Marsh."
+
+An icy hand seemed to be clutching Langham's heart. Gilmore's cruel
+smiling eyes noted his suffering. He laughed.
+
+"Of course, I don't think North killed McBride, not for one minute I
+don't; in fact, it's a dead moral certainty he didn't!" He leaned
+forward in his chair and looked into his companion's eyes. For an
+instant Langham met his glance without flinching and then his eyes
+shifted and sought the floor. "I'll bet," said Gilmore's cool voice,
+"I'll bet you what you like I could put my hand on the man who did the
+murder!" and as he spoke he reached out and by an apparently accidental
+gesture, rested his hand on Langham's shoulder. "You wouldn't like to
+risk any money on that little bet, eh, Marsh?" He sank back in his
+chair and applied himself to his cigar in silence, but his eyes never
+left Langham's face.
+
+Presently he took the cigar from between his strong even teeth. "Now,
+I'm going to give you my theory," he said. "I want to see what you think
+of it--but remember always, I believe in letting well enough alone! They
+got North caged in one of those nice new cells down at the jail and that
+suits me all right! My theory is that the man who killed McBride was
+needing money mighty badly and he went to McBride as a sort of a last
+chance. He found the old fellow alone in the office--understand, he
+didn't go there with any fixed purpose of killing him, his ideas had not
+carried him that far--he was willing to borrow the money if the old man
+would lend it to him. He probably needed quite a sum, say two or three
+thousand dollars, and the need was urgent, you must keep that in mind
+and then you'll see perfectly how it all happened. Possibly my man was
+of the sort who don't fancy disagreeable interviews and had put off
+going to the store until the last moment, but once he had settled that
+point with himself he was determined he wouldn't come away without the
+money. The old fellow, however, took a different view of the situation;
+he couldn't see why he should lend any money, especially when the
+borrower was vague on the matter of security.
+
+"Well, I guess they talked quite a while there at the back of the
+store, McBride standing in the doorway of the office all the time. At
+last it got to my man that he wasn't to have the money. But there was
+trouble ahead of him if he didn't get it and he wouldn't give up; he
+kept on making promises--urging his need--and his willingness and
+ability to meet his obligations. He was like a starving man in the
+presence of food, for he knew McBride had the money in his safe and the
+safe door was open. His need seemed the only need in all the world, and
+it came to him that since McBride would not lend him the money he
+wanted, why not take it from him anyhow? He couldn't see consequences,
+he could only realize that he must have two or three thousand dollars!
+Perhaps he got a glimmer of reason just here, and if he did he was
+pretty badly frightened to think that he should even consider violence;
+he turned away to leave McBride and the old man followed him a ways down
+the store, explaining why they couldn't do business."
+
+Gilmore paused. His cigar had gone out; now he struck a match, but he
+did not take his eyes from Langham's face. He did not speak at once even
+when his cigar was lighted.
+
+Great beads of perspiration stood thick on Langham's brow, his hair was
+damp and clammy. He was living that unspeakable moment over again, with
+all its madness and horror. He saw himself as he had walked scowling
+toward the front of the store; he had paused irresolutely with his hand
+on the door-knob and then had turned back. The old merchant was standing
+close by the scales, a tall gaunt figure in the waning light of day.
+
+"Why do you tell me you can't do it?" he had demanded with dull anger.
+"You have the money, I know that!"
+
+"I didn't tell you I couldn't do it, Mr. Langham, I merely intimated
+that I wouldn't," the old man had rejoined dryly.
+
+"You have the money in your safe!"
+
+"What if I have? It's mine to do with as I think proper."
+
+"A larger sum than I want--than I need!"
+
+"Quite likely."
+
+A furious gust of passion had laid hold of him, the consciousness of his
+necessity, all-compelling and relentless, swept through his brain. Money
+he must have!--his success, his happiness, everything depended on it,
+and what could money mean to this feeble old man whose days were almost
+spent?
+
+"I want you to let me have two thousand dollars!" he had insisted, as he
+placed his hand on the old merchant's shoulder. "Get it for me; I swear
+I'll pay it back. I'll give you such security as I can--my note--"
+
+McBride had laughed dryly at this, and he turned on his heel as though
+to reënter the office. Langham shot a quick glance about him; the store
+was empty, the street before it deserted; he saw through the dingy
+windows the swirling scarfs of white that the wind sent flying across
+the Square. Now was his time if ever! Bitter resentment urged him on--it
+was a monstrous thing that those who could, would not help him!
+
+Near the scales was an anvil, and leaning against the anvil-block was a
+heavy sledge. As the old merchant turned from him, he had caught up the
+sledge and had struck him a savage blow on the head. McBride had dropped
+to the floor without cry or groan.
+
+Langham passed his hand before his eyes to blot out the vision of that
+still figure on the floor, and a dry sob burst from his lips.
+
+"Eh, did you speak, Marsh?" asked Gilmore.
+
+"No," said Langham in a whisper.
+
+Gilmore laughed.
+
+"You are seeing just how it all happened, Marsh. There was a sledge by
+the anvil that stood near those scales, and when the old fellow wouldn't
+come to time, my man lost all restraint and snatched it up, and a second
+later McBride was dead. After that my man had things all his own way. He
+went through the safe and took what was useful to him,--and those damn
+bonds of North's which weren't useful,--and skipped by the side door and
+out over the shed roof and down the alley, just as Joe said."
+
+Gilmore paused, and flicked away a bit of cigar ash that had lodged in a
+crease of his coat.
+
+"That's the whole story of the McBride murder. Now what do you think of
+my theorizing, Marsh; how does it strike you?"
+
+But Langham did not answer him. The gambler's words had brought it all
+back; he was living again the agony of that first conscious moment when
+he realized the thing he had done. He remembered his hurried search for
+the money, and his flight through the side door; he remembered crossing
+the shed roof and the panic that had seized him as he dropped into the
+alley beyond, unseen, safe as he supposed. A debilitating reaction, such
+as follows some tremendous physical effort, had quickly succeeded. He
+had wandered through the deserted streets seeking control of himself in
+vain. Finally he had gone home. Evelyn was at his father's and the
+servant absent for the day. He had let himself in with his latchkey and
+had gone at once to the library. There he fell to pacing to and fro;
+ten--twenty minutes had passed, when the sudden noisy clamor of the town
+bell had taken him, cowering, to the window; but the world beyond was a
+vaguely curtained white.
+
+He raised his heavy bloodshot eyes and looked into the gambler's smiling
+face. He realized the futility of his act, since it had placed him
+irrevocably in Gilmore's power. He had endured unspeakable anguish all
+to no purpose, since Gilmore knew; knew with the certitude of an
+eye-witness. And there the gambler sat smiling and at ease, torturing
+him with his cunning speech.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+LOVE THAT ENDURES
+
+
+A melancholy wind raked the bare hills which rose beyond the flats, and
+found its way across half the housetops in Mount Hope to the solitary
+window that gave light and air to John North's narrow cell. For seven
+long days, over the intervening housetops, he had been observing those
+undulating hills, gazing at them until they seemed like some great live
+thing continually crawling along the horizon's rim, and continually
+disappearing in the distance. Now he was watching their misted shapes
+sink deep into the twilight.
+
+North, by his counsel, had waved the usual preliminary hearing before
+the mayor, his case had gone at once to the grand jury, he had been
+indicted and his trial was set for the February term of court. Watt
+Harbison had warned him that he might expect only this, yet his first
+feeling of astonished horror remained with him.
+
+As he stood by his window he was recalling the separate events of the
+day. The court room had been crowded to the verge of suffocation; when
+he entered it a sudden hush and a mighty craning of necks had been his
+welcome, and he had felt his cheeks redden and pale with a sense of
+shame at his hapless plight. Those many pairs of eyes that were fixed on
+him seemed to lay bare his inmost thoughts; he had known no refuge from
+their pitiless insistence.
+
+In that close overheated room the vitiated air had slowly mounted to the
+brain; soon a third of the spectators nodded in their chairs scarcely
+able to keep awake; others moved restlessly with a dull sense of
+physical discomfort, while the law, expressing itself in archaic terms,
+wound its way through a labyrinth of technicalities, and reached out
+hungrily for his very life.
+
+He knew that he would be given every opportunity to establish his
+innocence, but he could not rid himself of the ugly disconcerting belief
+that a man hunt was on, and that he, the hunted creature, was to be
+driven from cover to cover while the state drew its threads of testimony
+about him strand by strand, until they finally reached his very throat,
+choking, strangling, killing!
+
+He thought of Elizabeth and was infinitely sorry. She must forget him,
+she must go her way and leave him to go his--or the law's. He could face
+the ruin of his own life, but it must stop there! He wondered what they
+were saying and doing at Idle Hour; he wondered what the whole free
+world was doing, while he stood there gazing from behind his bars at the
+empurpled hills in the distance.
+
+He fell to pacing the narrow limits of his room; four steps took him to
+the door, then he turned and four steps took him back to his
+starting-point, the barred window. Presently a footfall sounded in the
+corridor, a key was fitted in the heavy lock, and the door was opened by
+Brockett, the sheriff's deputy, a round-faced, jolly, little man with a
+shiny bald head and a closely cropped gray mustache.
+
+"You've got visitors, John!" said Brockett cheerfully, pausing in the
+doorway.
+
+North turned on him swiftly.
+
+"The general and Miss Herbert,--you see your friends ain't forgot you!
+You'll want to see them, I suppose, and you'd rather go down in the
+office, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I should much prefer it!" said North.
+
+His first emotion had been one of keen delight, but as he followed
+Brockett down the corridor the memory of what he was, and where he was,
+came back to him. He had no right to demand anything of love or
+friendship,--guilty or innocent mattered not at all! They were nearing
+the door now beyond which stood Elizabeth and her father, and North
+paused, placing a hand on the deputy's arm. The spirit of his
+renunciation had been strong within him, but another feeling was
+stronger still, he found; an ennobling pride in her devotion and trust.
+What a pity the finer things of life were so often the impractical! He
+pushed past the deputy and entered the office.
+
+Elizabeth came toward him with hands extended. Her cheeks were quite
+colorless but the smile that parted her lips was infinitely tender and
+compassionate.
+
+"You should not have come here!" North said, almost reproachfully, as
+his hands closed about hers.
+
+General Herbert stood gravely regarding the two, and his glance when it
+rested on North was troubled and uncertain. The difficulties which beset
+this luckless fellow were only beginning, and what would the end be?
+
+"Father!"
+
+Elizabeth had turned toward him, and he advanced with as brave a show of
+cordiality as he could command; but North read and understood the look
+of pain in his frank gray eyes.
+
+"You agree with me that she should never have come here," North said
+quietly. "But you couldn't refuse her!" he added, and his glance went
+back to Elizabeth.
+
+"Under the circumstances it was right for her to come!" said the
+general. But in his heart he was none too sure.
+
+"I couldn't remain away after to-day; I had been waiting for that stupid
+jury to act--" She ended abruptly with a little laugh that became a sob,
+and her father rested a large and gentle hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"There, dear, I told you all along it wouldn't do to count on any jury!"
+
+"My affairs are worth considering only as they affect you, Elizabeth!"
+said North. "I was thinking of you when Brockett came to tell me you
+were here. Won't you go away from Mount Hope? I want you to
+forget,--no--" for she was about to speak; "wait until I have
+finished;--even if I am acquitted this will always be something
+discreditable in the eyes of the world, it's going to follow me through
+life! It is going to be hard for me to bear, it will be doubly hard for
+you, dear. I want your father to take you away and keep you away until
+this thing is settled. I don't want your name linked with mine; that's
+why I am sorry you came here, that's why you must never come here
+again."
+
+"You mustn't ask me to go away from Mount Hope, John!" said Elizabeth.
+"I am ready and willing to face the future with you; I was never more
+willing than now!"
+
+"You don't understand, Elizabeth!" said North. "We are just at the
+beginning. The trial, and all that, is still before us--long days of
+agony--"
+
+"And you would send me away when you will most need me!" she said, with
+gentle reproach.
+
+"I wish to spare you--"
+
+"But wherever I am, it will be the same!"
+
+"No, no,--you must forget--!"
+
+"If I can't,--what then?" she asked, looking up into his face.
+
+"I want you to try!" he urged.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Dear, I have lived through all this; I have asked myself if I really
+cared so much that nothing counted against the little comfort I might be
+to you; so much that the thought of what I am to you would outweigh
+every other consideration, and I am sure of myself. If I were not, I
+should probably wish to escape from it all. I am as much afraid of
+public opinion as any one, and as easily hurt, but my love has carried
+me beyond the point where such things matter!"
+
+"My dear! My dear! I am not worthy of such love."
+
+"You must let me be the judge of that."
+
+"Suppose the verdict is--guilty?" he asked.
+
+"No,--no, it will never be that!" But the color left her cheeks.
+
+"I don't suppose it will be," agreed North hastily.
+
+It was a cruel thing to force this doubt on her.
+
+"You won't send me away, John?" she entreated. "If I were to leave Mount
+Hope now it would break my heart! I--we--my father and I, wish every one
+to know that our confidence in you is unshaken."
+
+North turned to the general with a look of inquiry, of appeal. Something
+very like a sigh escaped the older man's lips, but he squared his
+shoulders manfully for the burdens they must bear. He said quietly:
+
+"Let us consider a phase of the situation that Elizabeth and I have been
+discussing this afternoon. Watt Harbison is no doubt doing all he can
+for you; but he was at Idle Hour last night, and said he would,
+himself, urge on you the retention of some experienced criminal lawyer.
+He suggested Ex-judge Belknap; I approve of this suggestion--"
+
+But North shook his head.
+
+"Oh, yes, John, it must be Judge Belknap!" cried Elizabeth. "Watt says
+it must be, and father agrees with him!"
+
+"But I haven't the money, dear. His retainer would probably swallow up
+all I have left."
+
+"Leave Belknap to me, North!" interposed the general.
+
+North's face reddened.
+
+"You are very kind, and I--I appreciate it all,--but don't you see I
+can't do that?" he faltered.
+
+"Don't be foolish, John. You must reconsider this determination; as a
+matter of fact I have taken the liberty of communicating with Belknap by
+wire; he will reach Mount Hope in the morning. We are vitally concerned,
+North, and you must accept help--money--whatever is necessary!"
+
+The expression on North's face softened, and tears stood in his eyes.
+
+"I knew you would prove reasonable," continued the general, and he
+glanced at Elizabeth.
+
+She was everything to him. He could have wished that North was almost
+any one else than North; and in spite of himself this feeling gave its
+color to their interview, something of his wonted frankness was lacking.
+It was his unconscious protest.
+
+"Very well, then, I will see Judge Belknap, and some day--when I can--"
+said North, still struggling with his emotion and his pride.
+
+"Oh, don't speak of that!" exclaimed General Herbert hastily.
+
+"This miserable business could not have happened at a worse time for
+me!" said the young fellow with bitterness.
+
+"Don't say that, John!" pleaded Elizabeth. "For your friends--"
+
+"You and your father, you mean!" interrupted North.
+
+"It is hard enough to think of you here alone, without--" Her voice
+faltered, and this time her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"I'll not object again, Elizabeth; that you should suffer is much the
+worst part of the whole affair!"
+
+Brockett had entered the room and General Herbert had drawn him aside.
+
+"I am coming every day, John!" said Elizabeth.
+
+"Will your father agree to that?" asked North.
+
+"Yes, can't you see how good and kind he is!"
+
+"Indeed I can, it is far beyond what I should be in his place, I'm
+afraid."
+
+"It has been so horrible,--such nights of agony--" she whispered.
+
+"I know, dear,--I know!" he said tenderly.
+
+"They are not looking for other clues and yet the man who killed poor
+old man McBride may be somewhere in Mount Hope at this very minute!"
+
+"Until I am proved innocent, I suppose they see nothing to do," said
+North.
+
+"But, John, you are not afraid of the outcome?" And she rested a hand on
+his arm.
+
+"No, I don't suppose I really am,--I shall be able to clear myself, of
+course; the law doesn't often punish innocent men, and I am innocent."
+
+He spoke with quiet confidence, and her face became radiant with the
+hope that was in his words.
+
+"You have taken to yourself more than your share of my evil fortunes,
+Elizabeth, dear--I shall be a poor sort of a fellow if my gratitude does
+not last to the end of my days!" said North.
+
+The general had shaken hands with the deputy and now crossed the room to
+Elizabeth and North.
+
+"We shall have to say good night, North. Can we do anything before we
+go?" he asked.
+
+"We will come again to-morrow, John,--won't we, father?" said Elizabeth,
+as she gave North her hands. "And Judge Belknap will be here in the
+morning!" She spoke with fresh courage and looked her lover straight in
+the eyes. Then she turned to the general.
+
+North watched them as they passed out into the night, and even after the
+door had closed on them he stood where she had left him. It was only
+when the little deputy spoke that he roused himself from his reverie.
+
+"Well, John, are you ready now?"
+
+"Yes," said North.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+AT HIS OWN DOOR
+
+
+Judge Langham sat in his library before a brisk wood fire with the day's
+papers in a heap on the floor beside him. In repose, the one dominant
+expression of the judge's face was pride, an austere pride, which
+manifested itself even in the most casual intercourse. Yet no man in
+Mount Hope combined fewer intimacies with a wider confidence, and his
+many years of public life had but augmented the universal respect in
+which he was held.
+
+Now in the ruddy light of his own hearth, but quite divorced from any
+sentiment or sympathy, the judge was considering the case of John North.
+His mind in all its operations was singularly clear and dispassionate; a
+judicial calm, as though born to the bench, was habitual to him. It was
+nothing that his acquaintance with John North dated back to the day John
+North first donned knee-breeches.
+
+He shaded his face with his hand. In the long procession of evil-doers
+who had gone their devious ways through the swinging baize doors of his
+court, North stalked as the one great criminal. Unconsciously his glance
+fixed itself on the hand he had raised to shield his eyes from the
+light of the blazing logs, and it occurred to him that that hand might
+yet be called on to sign away a man's life.
+
+The ringing of his door-bell caused him to start expectantly, and a
+moment later a maid entered to say that a man and a woman wished to see
+him.
+
+"Show them in!" said the judge.
+
+And Mr. Shrimplin with all that modesty of demeanor which one of his
+sensitive nature might be expected to feel in the presence of greatness,
+promptly insinuated himself into the room.
+
+The little lamplighter was dressed in those respectable garments which
+in the Shrimplin household were adequately described as his "other
+suit," and as if to remove any doubt from the mind of the beholder that
+he had failed to prepare himself for the occasion, he wore a clean paper
+collar, but no tie, this latter being an adornment Mr. Shrimplin had not
+attempted in years. Close on Shrimplin's heels came a jaded unkempt
+woman in a black dress, worn and mended. On seeing her the judge's cold
+scrutiny somewhat relaxed.
+
+"So it's you, Nellie?" he said, and motioned her to a chair opposite his
+own.
+
+Not knowing exactly what was expected of him, Mr. Shrimplin remained
+standing in the middle of the room, hat in hand.
+
+"Be seated, Shrimplin," said the judge, sensing something of the
+lamplighter's embarrassment in his presence and rather liking him for
+it.
+
+"Thank you, Judge," replied Shrimplin, selecting a straight-backed chair
+in a shadowy corner of the room, on the very edge of which he humbly
+established himself.
+
+"Better draw nearer the fire, Shrimplin!" advised the judge.
+
+"Thank you, Judge, I ain't cold," rejoined Mr. Shrimplin in his best
+manner.
+
+The judge turned to the woman. She had once been a servant in his
+household, but had quitted his employ to marry Joe Montgomery, and to
+become by that same act Mr. Shrimplin's sister-in-law. The judge knew
+that her domestic life had been filled with every known variety of
+trouble, since from time to time she had appealed to him for help or
+advice, and on more than one occasion at her urgent request he had
+interviewed the bibulous Joe.
+
+"I hope you are not in trouble, Nellie," he said, not unkindly.
+
+"Yes I am, Judge!" cried his visitor in a voice worn thin by weariness.
+
+"It's that disgustin' Joe!" interjected Mr. Shrimplin from his corner,
+advancing his hooked nose from the shadows. "Don't take up the judge's
+time, Nellie; time's money, and money's as infrequent as a white crow."
+
+And then suddenly and painfully conscious of his verbal forwardness, the
+little lamplighter sank back into the grateful gloom of his corner and
+was mute.
+
+"It's my man, Judge--" said Nellie.
+
+And the judge nodded comprehendingly.
+
+"I don't know how me and my children are to live through the winter, I
+declare I don't, Judge, unless he gives me a little help!"
+
+"And the winter ain't fairly here yet, and it's got a long belly when it
+does come!" said Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+Immediately the little man was conscious of the impropriety of his
+language. He realized that the happy and forcefully expressed philosophy
+with which he sought to open Custer's mind to the practical truths of
+life, was a jarring note in the judge's library.
+
+"Joe's acting scandalous, Judge, just scandalous!" said Nellie with
+sudden shrill energy. "That man would take the soul out of a saint with
+his carryings-on!"
+
+"It seems to me there is nothing new in this," observed the judge a
+little impatiently. "Is he under arrest?"
+
+"No, Judge, he ain't under arrest--" began Nellie.
+
+"Which ain't saying he hadn't ought to be!" the little lamplighter
+snorted savagely. He suddenly remembered he was there to give his moral
+support to his sister-in-law.
+
+"That man's got a new streak into him, Judge. I thought he'd about done
+everything he could do that he shouldn't, but he's broke out in a fresh
+spot!"
+
+"What has he been doing, Nellie?" asked the judge, who felt that his
+callers had so far lacked in directness and definiteness.
+
+"What ain't he been doing, you'd better say, Judge!" cried Nellie
+miserably.
+
+"Is he abusing you or the children?"
+
+"I don't see him from one week's end to another!"
+
+"Am I to understand that he has deserted you?" questioned the judge.
+
+"No, I can't say that, for he sends his clothes home for me to wash and
+mend."
+
+"Ain't that the human sufferin' limit?" gasped Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"I suppose you wash and mend them?" And the judge smiled faintly.
+
+"Of course," admitted Mrs. Montgomery simply.
+
+"Does he contribute anything toward your support?" asked the judge.
+
+The woman laughed sarcastically at this.
+
+"It takes a barkeeper to pry Joe loose from his coin," interjected Mr.
+Shrimplin. "Get down to details, Nellie, and tell the judge what kind of
+a critter you're hitched up to."
+
+"He told Arthur, that's my oldest boy, if I didn't stop bothering him,
+that he was just man enough to pay five dollars for the fun of knocking
+the front off my face!"
+
+"That was a choice one to hand out to an eldest son, wasn't it, your
+Honor?" said the little lamplighter, tugging at his flaxen mustache.
+
+"I just manage to keep a roof over our heads," went on Nellie, "and
+without any thanks to him; but he has plenty of money, and where it
+comes from I'd like to know, for he ain't done a lick of work in weeks!"
+
+"Fact, Judge!" remarked Mr. Shrimplin. "I've made it my business lately
+to keep one eye on Joe. He spends half his time loafin' at Andy
+Gilmore's rooms, and the other half gettin' pickled."
+
+"What do you wish me to do?" asked the judge, addressing himself to Mrs.
+Montgomery.
+
+"I wish, Judge, that you'd send word to him that you want to see him!"
+
+"And toss a good healthy scare into him!" added Mr. Shrimplin
+aggressively.
+
+"But he might not care to respect the summons; there is no reason why he
+should," explained the judge.
+
+"If he knows you want to see him, he'll come here fast enough!" said
+Nellie.
+
+The judge turned to Shrimplin.
+
+"Will you tell him this, Shrimplin, the first time you see him?"
+
+"Won't I!" said the little lamplighter. "Certainly, Judge--certainly!"
+and his agile fancy had already clothed the message in verbiage that
+should terrify the delinquent Joe.
+
+"Very well, then; but beyond giving him a word of advice and warning; I
+can do nothing."
+
+A night or two later, as the judge, who had spent the evening at
+Colonel Harbison's, came to his own gate, he saw a slouching figure
+detach itself from the shadows near his front door and advance to meet
+him midway of the graveled path that led to the street. It was Joe
+Montgomery.
+
+"Well, my man!" said the judge, with some little show of sternness. "I
+suppose you received my message?"
+
+Montgomery uncovered his shock of red hair, while his bulk of bone and
+muscle actually trembled in the presence of the small but awesome figure
+confronting him. He might have crushed the judge with a blow of his huge
+fist, but no possible provocation could have induced him to lay hands on
+Nellie's powerful ally.
+
+"That skunk Shrimplin says my old woman's been here," he faltered,
+"poisonin' your mind agin me!" A sickly grin relaxed his heavy jaws.
+"The Lord only knows what she expects of a man--I dunno! The more I try,
+the worse she gets; nothin' satisfies her!"
+
+His breath, reeking of whisky, reached the judge.
+
+"This is all very well, Montgomery, but I have a word or two to say to
+you--come into the house."
+
+He led his disreputable visitor into the library, turned up the gas, and
+intrenched himself on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire. The
+handy-man had kept near the door leading into the hall.
+
+"Come closer!" commanded the judge, and Montgomery, hat in hand,
+advanced a step. "I wish to warn you, Montgomery, that if you persist
+in your present course, it is certain to bring its own consequences,"
+began the judge.
+
+"Sure, boss!" Joe faltered abjectly.
+
+"I understand from Nellie that you have practically deserted your
+family," continued the judge.
+
+"Ain't she hateful?" cried Joe, shaking his great head.
+
+"When she married you, she had a right to expect you would not turn out
+the scoundrel you are proving yourself."
+
+"Boss, that's so," agreed Montgomery.
+
+"This won't do!" said the judge briskly. "Nellie says she doesn't see
+you from one week's end to another; that you have money and yet
+contribute nothing toward her support nor the support of your family."
+
+"I am willin' to go home, Judge!" said Montgomery, fingering his cap
+with clumsy hands. He took a step nearer the slight figure on the
+hearth-rug and dropped his voice to a husky half maudlin whisper. "He
+won't let me--see--I'm a nigger slave to him! I know I got a wife--I
+know I got a family, but he says--no! He says--'Joe, you damned old sot,
+you'll go home with a few drinks inside your freckled hide and begin to
+shoot off your mouth, and there'll be hell to pay for all of us!'"
+
+"He? What are you saying--who won't let you go home?" demanded the
+judge.
+
+"Andy Gilmore; he's afraid my old woman will get it out of me. I tell
+him I'm a married man but he says, 'No, you old soak, you stay here!'"
+
+"What has Andy Gilmore to do with whether you go home or not?" inquired
+the judge.
+
+"It's him and Marsh," said the handy-man. "They bully me till I'm that
+rattled--"
+
+"Marsh--do you mean my son, Marshall?" interrupted the judge.
+
+"Yes, boss--"
+
+"I don't understand this!" said the judge after a moment of silence.
+"Why should Mr. Gilmore or my son wish to keep you away from your wife?"
+
+"It's just a notion of theirs," replied Montgomery with sudden drunken
+loyalty. "And I'll say this--money never come so easy--and stuff to
+drink! Andy's got it scattered all about the place; there ain't many
+bars in this here town stocked up like his rooms!"
+
+The judge devoted a moment to a close scrutiny of his caller.
+
+"You are some sort of a relative of Mr. Gilmore's, are you not?" he
+asked at length.
+
+"We're cousins, boss."
+
+"Why does he wish to keep you away from your family?" the judge spoke
+after another brief pause.
+
+"It's my old woman," and Montgomery favored the judge with a drunken
+leer. "Suppose I was to go home full, what's to hinder her from gettin'
+things out of me? I'm a talker, drunk or sober, and Andy Gilmore knows
+it--that's what he's afraid of!"
+
+"What have you to tell that could affect Mr. Gilmore? Do you refer to
+the gambling that is supposed to go on in his rooms? If so, he is at
+needless pains in the matter; Mr. Moxlow will take up his case as soon
+as the North trial is out of the way."
+
+Montgomery started, took a forward step, and dropping his voice to an
+impressive whisper, said:
+
+"Judge, what are you goin' to do with young John North?"
+
+"I shall do nothing with John North; it is the law--society, to which he
+is accountable," rejoined the judge.
+
+"Will he be sent up, do you reckon?" asked Montgomery, and his small
+blue eyes searched the judge's face eagerly.
+
+"If he is convicted, he will either be sentenced to the penitentiary for
+a term of years or else hanged." The judge spoke without visible
+feeling.
+
+The effect of his words on the handy-man was singular. A hoarse
+exclamation burst from his lips, and his bloated face became pale and
+drawn.
+
+"You mustn't do that, boss!" he cried, spreading out his great hands in
+protest. "A term of years--how many's that?"
+
+"In this particular instance it may mean the rest of his life," said the
+judge.
+
+Montgomery threw up his arms in a gesture of despair.
+
+"Don't you be too rough on him, boss!" he cried. "For life!" he repeated
+in a tone of horror. "But that ain't what Andy and Marsh tell me; they
+say his friends will see him through, that he's got the general back of
+him, and money--how's that, Judge?"
+
+"They are making sport of your ignorance," said the judge, almost
+pityingly.
+
+"I'm done with them!" cried Joe Montgomery with a great oath. He raised
+one clenched hand and brought it down in the opened palm of the other.
+"Andy's everlastingly lied to me; I won't help send no man up for life!"
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded the judge, astonished at this sudden
+outburst, and impressed, in spite of himself, by the man's earnestness.
+
+"Just what I say, boss! They can count me out--I'm agin 'em, I'm agin
+'em every time!" And again, as if to give force to his words, he swung
+his heavy first around and struck the open palm of his other hand a
+stinging blow. "Eatin' and sleepin', I'm agin 'em! I ain't liked the
+look of this from the first, and now I'm down and out, and they can go
+to hell for all of me!"
+
+The judge rested an elbow on the chimneypiece and regarded Montgomery
+curiously. He knew the man was drunk; he knew that sober he would
+probably have said much less than he was now saying, but he also knew
+that there was some powerful feeling back of his words.
+
+"If you are involved in any questionable manner with Mr. Gilmore, I
+should advise you to think twice before you go further with it. Mr.
+Gilmore is shrewd, he has money; you are a poor man and you are an
+ignorant man. Your reputation is none of the best."
+
+"Thank you, boss!" said Montgomery gratefully.
+
+"Mr. Gilmore probably expects to use you for his own ends regardless of
+the consequences to you," finished the judge.
+
+"Supposin'--" began the handy-man huskily, "supposin', boss, I was to go
+into court and swear to something that wasn't so; what's that?" and he
+bent a searching glance on the judge's face.
+
+"Perjury," said the judge laconically.
+
+"What's it worth to a man? I reckon it's like drinkin' and stealin',
+it's got so many days and costs chalked up agin it?"
+
+"I think," said the judge quietly, "that you would better tell me what
+you mean. Ordinarily I should not care to mix in your concerns, but on
+Nellie's account--"
+
+"God take a likin' to you, boss!" cried Montgomery. "I know I ought to
+have kept out of this. I told Andy Gilmore how it would be, that I
+hadn't the brains for it; but he was to stand back of me. And so he
+will--to give me a kick and a shove when he's done with me!"
+
+He saw himself caught in that treacherous fabric Gilmore had erected for
+John North, whose powerful friends would get him clear. Andy and Marsh
+would go unscathed, too. Only Joe Montgomery would suffer--Joe
+Montgomery, penniless and friendless, a cur in the gutter for any decent
+man to kick! He passed the back of his hand across his face.
+
+"It's a hell of a world and be damned to it!" he muttered hoarsely under
+his breath.
+
+"You must make it clearer to me than this!" said the judge impatiently.
+
+Montgomery seemed to undergo a brief but intense mental struggle, then
+he blurted out:
+
+"Boss, I lied when I said it was North I seen come over old man
+McBride's shed that night!"
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you perjured yourself in the North case?"
+asked the judge sternly.
+
+"Sure, I lied!" said the handy-man. "But Andy Gilmore was back of that
+lie; it was him told me what I was to say, and it's him that kept
+houndin' me, puttin' me up to say more than I ever agreed to!" He
+slouched nearer the judge. "Boss, I chuck up the whole business; do you
+understand? I want to take back all I said; I'm willin' to tell the God
+A'mighty's truth!"
+
+He paused abruptly. In his excitement he had forgotten what the truth
+meant, what it would mean to the man before him. He was vaguely aware
+that in abler hands than his own, this knowledge which he possessed
+would have been molded into a terrible weapon, but he was impotent to
+use it; with every advantage his, he felt only the desperate pass in
+which he had placed himself. If Gilmore and Marshall Langham could
+juggle with John North's life, what of his own life when the judge
+should have become their ally!
+
+"Me and you'll have to fix up what I got to say, boss!" he added with a
+cunning grin.
+
+"Do you mean you wish to make a statement to me?" asked the judge.
+
+The handy-man nodded. The judge hesitated.
+
+"Perhaps we would better send for Mr. Moxlow?" he suggested.
+
+But Montgomery shook his head vehemently.
+
+"I got nothin' to say to that man Moxlow!" he growled with sullen
+determination.
+
+"Very well, then, if you prefer to make your statement to me," and the
+judge turned to his desk.
+
+"Hold on, boss, we ain't ready for that just yet!" Joe objected. He was
+sober enough, by this time.
+
+"What is it you wish to tell me?"
+
+And the judge resumed his former position on the hearth-rug.
+
+"First you got to agree to get me out of this."
+
+"I can agree to nothing," answered the judge quietly.
+
+"I ain't smart, boss, but Joe Montgomery's old hide means a whole lot to
+Joe Montgomery! You give me your word that I'll be safe, no matter what
+happens!"
+
+"I can promise you nothing," repeated the judge.
+
+"Then what's the use of my tellin' you the truth?" demanded Montgomery.
+
+"It has become the part of wisdom, since you have already admitted that
+you have perjured yourself."
+
+"Boss, if it wasn't John North I seen in the alley that day, who was
+it?" and he strode close to the judge's side, dropping his voice to a
+whisper.
+
+"Perhaps the whole story was a lie."
+
+The handy-man laughed and drew himself up aggressively.
+
+"I'm a man as can do damage--I got to be treated right, or by the Lord
+I'll _do_ damage! I been badgered and hounded by Marsh and Andy Gilmore
+till I'm fair crazy. They got to take their hands off me and leave me
+loose, for I won't hang no man on their say-so! John North never done me
+no harm, I got nothing agin him!"
+
+"You have admitted that your whole story of seeing John North on the
+night of the McBride murder is a lie," said the judge.
+
+"Boss, there is truth enough in it to hang a man!"
+
+"You saw a man cross McBride's sheds?"
+
+And the judge kept his eyes fastened on the handy-man's face.
+
+"I seen a man cross McBride's shed, boss."
+
+"And you have sworn that that man was John North."
+
+"I swore to a lie. Boss, we got to fix it this way: I seen a man come
+over the roof and drop into the alley; I swore it was John North, but I
+never meant to swear to that; the most I promised Andy was that I'd say
+I thought it _looked_ like John North, but them infernal lawyers got
+after me, and the first thing I knowed I'd said it _was_ John North!"
+
+"Your story is absurd!" exclaimed the judge, with a show of anger.
+
+The handy-man raised his right hand dramatically.
+
+"It's God A'mighty's everlastin' truth!" he swore.
+
+"Understand, I have made you no promises," said the judge, disregarding
+him.
+
+"You're goin' back on me!" cried Montgomery. "Then you look out. I'm a
+man as can do harm if I have a mind to; don't you give me the mind,
+boss!"
+
+"I shall lay this matter before Mr. Moxlow in the morning," replied the
+judge quietly and with apparent indifference, but covertly he was
+watching the effect of his words on Montgomery.
+
+"And then they'll be after me!" cried the handy-man.
+
+"Very likely," said the judge placidly.
+
+Montgomery glanced about as though he half expected to see Gilmore rise
+up out of some shadowy corner.
+
+"Boss, do you want to know who it was I seen come over old man McBride's
+shed? Do you want to know why Andy and Marsh are so set agin my goin'
+home to my old woman? Why they give me money? It's a pity I ain't a
+smarter man! I'd own 'em, both body and soul!"
+
+"Man, you are mad!" cried the judge.
+
+But this man who was usually austere and always unafraid, was feeling a
+strange terror of the debased and slouching figure before him.
+
+"Do you reckon you're man enough to hear what I got in me to tell?"
+asked Montgomery, again raising his right hand high above his head as if
+he called on Heaven to witness the truth of what he said. "Why won't
+they let me go home to my old woman, boss? Why do they keep me at Andy
+Gilmore's--why do they give me money? Because what I'm tellin' you is
+all a lie, I suppose! Just because they like old Joe Montgomery and want
+him 'round! I don't think!" He threw back his head and laughed with
+rough sarcasm. "You're a smarter man than me, boss; figure it out; give
+a reason for it!"
+
+But the judge, white-faced and shaken to his very soul, was silent; yet
+he guessed no part of the terrible truth Montgomery supposed he had made
+plain to him. At the most he believed Marshall was shielding Gilmore
+from the consequences of a crime the gambler had committed.
+
+Montgomery, sinister and menacing, shuffled across the room and then
+back to the judge's side.
+
+"You ask Marsh, boss, what it all means. I got nothin' more to say! Ask
+him who killed old man McBride! If he don't know, no man on this green
+earth does!"
+
+The judge's face twitched convulsively, but he made no answer to this.
+
+"Ask him!" repeated the handy-man, and swinging awkwardly on his heel
+went from the room without a single backward glance.
+
+An instant later the street-door closed with a noisy bang.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+AN UNWILLING GUEST
+
+
+Montgomery told himself he would go home; he had seen the last of the
+gambler and Marsh Langham, he would look out for his own skin now and
+they could look out for theirs. He laughed boisterously as he strode
+along. He had fooled them both; he, Joe Montgomery, had done this, and
+by a very master stroke of cunning had tied the judge's hands. But as he
+shuffled down the street he saw the welcoming lights of Lonigan's saloon
+and suddenly remembered there was good hard money in his ragged pockets.
+He would have just one drink and then go home to his old woman.
+
+It was well on toward midnight when he came out on the street again, and
+the one drink had become many drinks; still mindful of his original
+purpose, however, he reeled across the Square on his way home. He had
+just turned into Mulberry Street when he became conscious of a brisk
+step on the pavement at his side, and at the same instant a heavy hand
+descended on his shoulder and he found himself looking into Andy
+Gilmore's dark face.
+
+"Where have you been?" demanded Gilmore. "I thought I told you to stay
+about to-night!"
+
+"I have been down to Lonigan's saloon," faltered Joe, his courage going
+from him at sight of the gambler.
+
+"What took you there?" asked Gilmore angrily. "Don't you get enough to
+drink at my place?"
+
+"Lots to drink, boss, but it's mostly too rich for my blood. I ain't
+used to bein' so pampered."
+
+"Come along with me!" said Gilmore briefly.
+
+"Where to, boss?" asked Montgomery, in feeble protest.
+
+"You'll know presently."
+
+"I thought I'd like to go home, maybe--" said Joe irresolutely.
+
+"Never mind what you thought you'd like, you come with me!" insisted
+Gilmore.
+
+Although the handy-man's first impulse had been that of revolt, he now
+followed the gambler meekly back across the Square. They entered the
+building at the corner of Main Street and mounted to Mr. Gilmore's
+rooms. The latter silently unlocked the door and motioned Montgomery to
+precede him into the apartment, then he followed, pausing midway of the
+room to turn up the gas which was burning low. Next he divested himself
+of his hat and coat, and going to a buffet which stood between the two
+heavily curtained windows that overlooked the Square, found a decanter
+and glasses. These he brought to the center-table, where he leisurely
+poured his unwilling guest a drink.
+
+"Here, you old sot, soak this up!" he said genially.
+
+"Boss, I want to go home to my old woman!" began the handy-man, after he
+had emptied his glass.
+
+"Your old woman will keep!" retorted Gilmore shortly.
+
+"But, boss, I got to go to her; the judge says I must! She's been there
+to see him; damn it, she cried and hollered and took on awful because
+she ain't seein' me; it was pitiful!"
+
+"What's that?" demanded Gilmore sharply.
+
+"It was pitiful!" repeated Montgomery, shaking his great head
+dolorously.
+
+"Oh, cut that! Who have you seen?"
+
+"Judge Langham."
+
+"When did you see him?"
+
+Mr. Gilmore spoke with a forced calm.
+
+"To-night. My old woman--"
+
+"Oh, to hell with your old woman!" shouted the gambler furiously. "Do
+you mean that you were at Judge Langham's to-night?"
+
+"Yes, boss; he sent for me, see? I had to go!" explained Montgomery.
+
+"Why did you go there without letting me know, you drunken loafer?"
+stormed Gilmore.
+
+He took the handy-man by the arm and pushed him into a chair, then he
+stood above him, black-browed and menacing.
+
+"Boss, don't you blame me, it was my old woman; she wants me home with
+the kids and her, and the judge, he says I got to go!"
+
+"If he wants to know why I'm keeping you here, send him round to me!"
+said Gilmore.
+
+"All right, I will." And Montgomery staggered to his feet.
+
+But Gilmore pushed him back into his chair.
+
+"What else did you talk about besides your old woman?" asked the
+gambler, after an oppressive silence in which Montgomery heard only the
+thump of his heart against his ribs.
+
+"I told him you'd always been like a father to me--" said the handy-man,
+ready to weep.
+
+"I'm obliged to you for that!" replied Gilmore with a smile of grim
+humor.
+
+"He said he always knowed it," added Montgomery, misled by the smile.
+
+"Well, what else?" questioned Gilmore.
+
+"Why, I reckon that was about all!" said Joe, who had ventured as far
+afield into the realms of fancy as his drunken faculties would allow.
+
+"You're sure about that?"
+
+"I hope I may die--"
+
+"And the judge says you're to go home?"
+
+"Say, Shrimp took my old woman there, and she cried and bellered and
+carried on awful! She loves me, boss--the judge says I'm to go home to
+her to-night or he'll have me pinched. He says that you and Marsh ain't
+to keep me here no longer!"
+
+His voice rose into a wail, for blind terror was laying hold of him.
+There was something, a look on Gilmore's handsome cruel face, he did not
+understand but which filled him with miserable foreboding.
+
+"What's that, about Marsh and me keeping you here?" inquired Gilmore.
+
+"You got to leave me loose--"
+
+"So you told him that?"
+
+"I had to tell him somethin'. My old woman made an awful fuss! They had
+to throw water on her; Shrimp took her home in an express-wagon. Hell,
+boss, I'm a married man--I got a family! I know what I ought to do, and
+I'm goin' home, the judge says I got to! Him and me talked it all over,
+and he's goin' to speak to Marsh about keepin' me here!"
+
+"So you've told him we keep you here?" And the gambler glowered at him.
+He poured himself a drink of whisky and swallowed it at a gulp. "Well,
+what else did you tell him?" he asked over the rim of his glass.
+
+"That's about all; only me and the judge understand each other," said
+the handy-man vaguely.
+
+"Well, it was enough!" rejoined Gilmore. "You are sure you didn't say
+anything about North?"
+
+Montgomery shook his head in vigorous denial.
+
+"Sure?" repeated Gilmore, his glance intent and piercing. "Sure?"
+
+A sickly pallor was overspreading the handy-man's flame-colored visage.
+It began at his heavy puffy jaws, and diffused itself about his cheeks.
+He could feel it spread.
+
+"Sure?" said the gambler. "Sure?"
+
+There was an awful pause. Gilmore carefully replaced his glass on the
+table, then he roared in a voice of thunder:
+
+"Stand up, you hound!"
+
+Montgomery realized that the consequences of his treachery were to be
+swift and terrible. He came slowly to his feet, but no sooner had he
+gained them than Gilmore drove his fist into his face, and he collapsed
+on his chair.
+
+"Stand up!" roared Gilmore again.
+
+And again Montgomery came erect only to be knocked back into a sitting
+posture, with a long gash across his jaw where the gambler's diamond
+ring had left its mark.
+
+"I tell you, stand up!" cried Gilmore.
+
+Reaching forward he seized Montgomery by the throat with his left hand
+and jerked him to his feet, then holding him so, he coolly battered his
+face with his free hand.
+
+"For God's sake, quit, boss--you're killin' me!" cried Joe, as he vainly
+sought to protect his face with his arms.
+
+But Mr. Gilmore had a primitive prejudice in favor of brute force, and
+the cruel blows continued until Montgomery seemed to lose power even to
+attempt to shield himself; his great hands hung helpless at his side and
+his head fell over on his shoulder. Seeing which the gambler released
+his victim, who, limp and quivering, dropped to the floor.
+
+Still crazed with rage, Gilmore kicked the handy-man into a corner, and
+turning poured himself still another drink of whisky. If he had spoken
+then of what was uppermost in his mind, it would have been to complain
+of the rotten luck which in so ticklish a business had furnished him
+with fools and sots for associates. He should have known better than to
+have trusted drunken Joe Montgomery; he should have kept out of the
+whole business--
+
+With the suddenness of revelation he realized his own predicament, but
+with the realization came the knowledge that he was now hopelessly
+involved; that he could not go back; that he must go on, or--here he
+threw back his shoulders as though to cast off his evil forebodings--or
+between the dusk of one day and the dawn of another, he might disappear
+from Mount Hope.
+
+With this cheering possibility in mind, he picked up the glass of whisky
+beside him and emptied it at a single draught, then he put on his
+overcoat and hat and went from the room, locking the door behind him.
+
+Presently the wretched heap on the floor stirred and moaned feebly, and
+then lay still. A little later it moaned again. Lifting his head he
+stared vacantly about him.
+
+"Boss--" he began in a tone of entreaty, but realizing that he was
+alone he fell weakly to cursing Gilmore.
+
+It was a good five minutes from the time he recovered consciousness
+until he was able to assume a sitting posture, when he rested his
+battered face in his hands and nursed his bruises.
+
+"And me his cousin!" he muttered, and groaned again.
+
+He feebly wiped his bloody hands on the legs of his trousers and by an
+effort staggered to his feet. His only idea was escape; and steadying
+himself he managed to reach the door; but the door was locked, and he
+flung himself down in a convenient chair and once more fell to nursing
+his wounds.
+
+Fifteen or twenty minutes had passed when he heard steps in the hallway.
+He knew it was Gilmore returning, but the gambler was not alone;
+Montgomery heard him speak to his companion as a key was fitted to the
+lock. The door swung open and Gilmore, followed by Marshall Langham,
+entered the room.
+
+"Here's the drunken hound, Marsh!" said the gambler.
+
+"For God's sake, boss, let me out of this!" cried Montgomery, addressing
+himself to Langham.
+
+"Yes, we will--like hell!" said Gilmore. "By rights we ought to take you
+down to the creek, knock you in the head and heave you in--eh, Marsh?
+That's about the size of what we _ought_ to do!"
+
+Langham's face was white and drawn with apprehension, yet he surveyed
+the ruin the gambler had wrought with something like pity.
+
+"Why, what's happened to him, Andy?" he asked.
+
+His companion laughed brutally.
+
+"Oh, I punched him up some, I couldn't keep my hands off him, I only
+wonder I didn't kill him--"
+
+"Let me out of this, boss--" whined the handy-man.
+
+"Shut up, you!" said the gambler roughly.
+
+He drew back his hand, but Langham caught his arm.
+
+"Don't do that, Andy!" he said. "He isn't in any shape to stand much
+more of that; and what's the use, the harm's done!"
+
+The gambler scowled on his cousin Joe with moody resentment.
+
+"All the same I've got a good notion to finish the job!" he said.
+
+"Let me go home, boss!" entreated Montgomery, still addressing himself
+to Langham. "God's sake, he pretty near killed me!"
+
+He stood up on shaking legs.
+
+Wretched, abject, his uneasy glance shifted first from one to the other
+of his patrons, who were now his judges, and for aught he knew would be
+his executioners as well. The gambler glared back at him with an
+expression of set ferocity which told him he need expect no mercy from
+that source; but with Langham it was different; he at least was not
+wantonly brutal. The sight of physical suffering always distressed him
+and Joe's bruised and bloody face was more than he could bear to look
+at.
+
+"For two cents I'd knock him on the head!" jerked out Gilmore.
+
+"Oh, quit, Andy; let him alone! I want to ask him a question or two,"
+said Langham.
+
+"You'll never know from him what he said or didn't say--you'll learn
+that from the judge himself," and Gilmore laughed harshly.
+
+A minute or two passed before Langham could trust himself to speak. When
+he did, he turned to Montgomery to ask:
+
+"I wish you'd tell me as nearly as you can what you said to my father?"
+
+"I didn't go there to tell him anything, boss; he just got it out of me.
+What chance has a slob like me with him?"
+
+"Got what out of you?" questioned Langham in a low voice.
+
+"Well, he didn't get much, boss," replied Montgomery, shaking his head.
+
+"But what did you tell him?" insisted Langham.
+
+"I don't remember, boss, I was full, see--and maybe I said too much and
+then agin maybe I didn't!"
+
+"I hope you like this, Marsh; it's the sort of thing I been up against,"
+said Gilmore.
+
+By way of answer Langham made a weary gesture. The horror of the
+situation was now a thing beyond fear.
+
+"I'm for sending the drunken loafer to the other side of the continent,"
+said Gilmore.
+
+"What's the use of that?" asked Langham dully.
+
+"Every use," rejoined Gilmore with fresh confidence. "It's enough, ain't
+it, that he's talked to your father; we can't take chances on his
+talking to any one else. There's the west-bound express; I'm for putting
+him on that--there's time enough. We can give him a couple of hundred
+dollars and that will be the end of him, for if he ever shows his face
+here in Mount Hope, I'll break every bone in his body. What do you say?"
+
+"Perhaps you are right!" And Langham glanced uncertainly at the
+handy-man.
+
+"Well, it's either that, or else I can knock him over the head. Perhaps
+you had rather do that, it's more in your line."
+
+"Boss, you give me the money and let me go now, and I won't _ever_ come
+back!" cried Montgomery eagerly. "I been lookin' for the chance to get
+clear of this bum town! I'll stay away, don't you lose no sleep about
+that; I ain't got nothin' to ever bring me back."
+
+And on the moment Mr. Montgomery banished from his mind and heart all
+idea of the pure joys of domestic life. It was as if his old woman had
+never been. He was sure travel was what he required, and a great deal
+of it, and all in one direction--away from Mount Hope.
+
+No unnecessary time was wasted on Montgomery's appearance. A wet towel
+in the not too gentle hands of Mr. Gilmore removed the blood stains from
+his face, and then he was led forth into the night,--the night which so
+completely swallowed up all trace of him that his old woman and her
+brood sought his accustomed haunts in vain. Nor was Mr. Moxlow any more
+successful in his efforts to discover the handy-man's whereabouts. As
+for Mount Hope she saw in the mysterious disappearance of the star
+witness only the devious activities of John North's friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+FATHER AND SON
+
+
+While Mr. Gilmore was an exceedingly capable accomplice, at once
+resourceful, energetic, unsentimental and conscienceless, he yet
+combined with these solid merits, certain characteristics which rendered
+uninterrupted intercourse with him a horror and a shame to Marshall
+Langham who was daily and almost hourly paying the price the gambler had
+set on his silence. And what a price it was! Gilmore was his master,
+coarse, brutal, and fiercely exacting. How he hated him, and yet how
+necessary he had become; for the gambler never faltered, was never
+uncertain; he met each difficulty with a callous readiness which Langham
+knew he himself would utterly have lacked. He decided this was because
+Gilmore was without imagination, since in his own many fearful, doubting
+moments, he saw always what he had come to believe as the inevitable
+time when the wicked fabric they were building would collapse like a
+house of cards in a gale of wind, and his terrible secret would be
+revealed to all men.
+
+All this while, step by step, Gilmore, without haste but without pause,
+was moving toward his desires. He came and went in the Langham house as
+if he were master there.
+
+When Marshall had first informed Evelyn that he expected to have Mr.
+Gilmore in to dinner, there had been a scene, and she had threatened to
+appeal to the judge; but he told her fiercely that he would bring home
+whom he pleased, that it suited him to be decent to Andy and that was
+all there was to it. And apparently she soon found something to like in
+this strange intimate of her husband's; at least she had made no protest
+after the gambler's first visit to the house.
+
+On his part Gilmore was quickly conscious of the subtle encouragement
+she extended him. She understood him, she saw into his soul, she divined
+his passion for her and she was not shocked by it. In his unholy musings
+he told himself that here was a woman who was dead game--and a lady,
+too, with all the pretty ways and refinements that were so lacking in
+the other women he had known.
+
+Montgomery was some two days gone toward the West and Gilmore had
+dropped around ostensibly to see Marshall Langham, but in reality to
+make love to Marshall Langham's wife, when the judge, looking gray and
+old, walked in on the little group unobserved. He paused for an instant
+near the door.
+
+Evelyn was seated before the piano and Gilmore was bending above her,
+while Marshall, with an unread book in his hands and with a half-smoked
+cigar between his teeth, was lounging in front of the fire. The judge's
+glance rested questioningly on Gilmore, but only for a moment. Then an
+angry flame of recognition colored his thin cheeks.
+
+Aware now of his father's presence, Marshall tossed aside his book and
+quitted his chair. For two days he had been dreading this meeting, and
+for two days he had done what he could to avert it.
+
+"You must have had a rather cold walk, father; let me draw a chair up
+close to the fire for you," he said.
+
+Evelyn had risen to greet the judge, while the gambler turned to give
+him an easy nod. A smile hid itself in the shadow of his black mustache;
+he was feeling very sure of himself and surer still of Evelyn. The
+disfavor or approval of this slight man of sixty meant nothing to him.
+
+"How do you do, sir!" said the judge with icy civility.
+
+Had he met Gilmore on the street he would not have spoken to him. As he
+slowly withdrew his eyes from the gambler, he said to his son:
+
+"Can you spare me a moment or two, Marshall?"
+
+"Come into the library," and Marshall led the way from the room.
+
+They walked the length of the hall in silence, Marshall a step or two in
+advance of the judge. He knew his father was there on no trivial errand.
+This visit was the result of his interview with Joe Montgomery. How
+much had the handy-man told him? This was the question that had been
+revolving in his mind for the last two days, and he was about to find an
+answer to it.
+
+The father and son entered the room, each heavily preoccupied. Marshall
+seated himself and stared moodily into the fire. Already the judge had
+found a chair and his glance was fixed on the carpet at his feet.
+Presently looking up he asked:
+
+"Will you be good enough to tell me what that fellow is doing here?"
+
+"Andy?"
+
+The single word came from Langham as with a weary acceptance of his
+father's anger.
+
+"Yes, certainly--Gilmore--of whom do you imagine me to be speaking?"
+
+"Give a dog a bad name--"
+
+"He has earned his name. I had heard something of this but did not
+credit it!" said the judge.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"Perhaps you will be good enough to explain how I happen to meet that
+fellow here?"
+
+The judge regarded his son fixedly. There had always existed a cordial
+frankness in their intercourse, for though the judge was a man of few
+intimacies, family ties meant much to him, and these ties were now all
+centered in his son. He had shown infinite patience with Marshall's
+turbulent youth; an even greater patience with his dissipated manhood;
+he believed that in spite of the terrible drafts he was making on his
+energies, his future would not be lacking in solid and worthy
+achievement. In his own case the traditional vice of the Langhams had
+passed him by. He was grateful for this, but it had never provoked in
+him any spirit of self-righteousness; indeed, it had only made him the
+more tender in his judgment of his son's lapses.
+
+"Marshall--" and the tone of anger had quite faded from his
+voice--"Marshall, what is that fellow's hold on you?"
+
+"You would not appreciate Andy's peculiar virtues even if I were to try
+to describe them," said Marshall with a smile of sardonic humor.
+
+"Do you consider him the right sort of a person to bring into your
+home?"
+
+"It won't hurt him!" said Marshall.
+
+The judge, with a look on his face that mingled astonishment and injury,
+sank back in his chair. He never attempted anything that even faintly
+suggested flippancy, and he was unappreciative of this tendency in
+others.
+
+"You have not told me what this fellow's hold on you is?" he said, after
+a moment's silence.
+
+"Oh, he's done me one or two good turns."
+
+"You mean in the way of money?"
+
+Marshall nodded.
+
+"Are you in his debt now, may I ask?"
+
+"No," and Marshall moved restlessly.
+
+"Are you quite frank with me, Marshall?" asked the judge with that rare
+gentleness of voice and manner that only his son knew.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Because it would be better to make every sacrifice and be rid of the
+obligation."
+
+Another long pause followed in which there came to the ears of the two
+men the sound of a noisy waltz that Evelyn was playing. Again it was the
+judge who broke the oppressive silence.
+
+"I came here to-night, Marshall, because there is a matter I must
+discuss with you. Perhaps you will tell me what you and Gilmore have
+done with Joe Montgomery?"
+
+Marshall had sought to prepare himself against the time when this very
+question should be asked him, but the color left his cheeks.
+
+"I don't think I know what you mean," he said slowly.
+
+His father made an impatient gesture.
+
+"Don't tell me that! What has become of Montgomery? Look at me! Two
+nights ago he came to see me; I had sent for him; I had learned from
+Nellie that he had practically deserted her. I learned further from the
+man himself that you and Gilmore were largely responsible for this."
+
+"He was drunk, of course."
+
+"He had been drinking--yes--"
+
+"Doesn't that explain his remarkable statement? What reason could Andy
+or any one have for wishing to keep him from his wife?" asked Marshall
+who had recovered his accustomed steadiness.
+
+"He was ready with an answer for that question when I asked it. Do you
+wish to know what that answer was?" said the judge.
+
+Marshall did not trust himself to speak; he felt the judge's eyes on him
+and could not meet them. He saw himself cowering there in his chair with
+his guilt stamped large on every feature. His throat was dry and his
+lips were parched, he did not know whether he could speak. His shoulders
+drooped and his chin rested on his breast. What was the use--was it
+worth the struggle? Suppose Montgomery, in spite of his promises, came
+back to Mount Hope, suppose Gilmore's iron nerve failed him!
+
+"You don't answer me, Marshall," said the judge.
+
+"I don't understand you--" evaded Marshall.
+
+"From my soul I wish I could believe you!" exclaimed his father. "If
+it's not debt, what is the nature of your discreditable connection with
+Gilmore?"
+
+Marshall glanced up quickly; he seemed to breathe again; perhaps after
+all Montgomery had said less than he supposed him to have said!
+
+"I have already told you that I owe Gilmore nothing!"
+
+"I should be glad to think it, but I warn you to stand clear of him and
+his concerns, for I am going to investigate the truth of Montgomery's
+story," declared the judge.
+
+"What did he tell you?" Marshall spoke with an effort.
+
+"That his evidence in the North case was false, that it was inspired by
+Gilmore."
+
+Marshall passed a shaking hand across his face.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said.
+
+"His story will be worth looking into. He stood for the truth of what he
+said in part, he insisted that he saw a man cross McBride's shed on the
+night of the murder and drop into the alley, and the man was not John
+North. He seemed unwilling that North, through any instrumentality of
+his, should suffer for a crime of which he was innocent; his feeling on
+this point was unfeigned and unmistakable."
+
+There was silence again, while the two men stared at each other. From
+the parlor the jarring sound of the music reached them, inconceivably
+out of harmony with the seriousness of their mood.
+
+"I have wished to take no action in the matter of Montgomery's
+disappearance until I saw you, Marshall," said the judge. "I have been
+sick with this thing! Now I am going to lay such facts as I have before
+Moxlow."
+
+Marshall stared moodily into the fire. He told himself that the
+prosecuting attorney would be in great luck if he got anything out of
+Gilmore.
+
+"I purpose to suggest to Moxlow a fresh line of investigation where this
+important witness is concerned, and Mr. Gilmore as the man most likely
+to clear up the mystery surrounding his disappearance from Mount Hope.
+We may not be able to get anything very tangible out of him in the way
+of information, but I imagine we may cause him some little anxiety and
+annoyance. You can't afford to be mixed up in this affair, and I warn
+you again to stand clear of Gilmore! If there is any truth in
+Montgomery's statement it can only have the most sinister significance,
+for I don't need to tell you that some powerful motive must be back of
+Gilmore's activity. If North was not responsible for McBride's death,
+where do the indications all point? Who more likely to commit such a
+crime than a social outcast--a man plying an illegal trade in defiance
+of the laws?"
+
+"Hush! For God's sake speak lower!" cried Marshall, giving way to an
+uncontrollable emotion of terror.
+
+Racked and shaken, he stared about him as if he feared another presence
+in the room. The judge leaned forward and rested a thin hand on his
+son's knee.
+
+"Marshall, what do you know of Gilmore's connection with this matter?"
+
+"I want him let alone! To lay such stress on Montgomery's drunken talk
+is absurd!"
+
+The judge's lips met in a determined line.
+
+"I scarcely expected to hear that from you! I am not likely, as you
+know, to be influenced in the discharge of my duty by any private
+consideration."
+
+He quitted his chair and stood erect, his figure drawn to its fullest
+height.
+
+"Wait--I didn't mean that," protested Marshall.
+
+The judge resumed his chair.
+
+"What did you mean?" he asked.
+
+"What's the use of throwing Moxlow off on a fresh scent?"
+
+"That's a very remarkable point of view!" said the judge, with a
+mirthless laugh.
+
+In the utter selfishness that his fear had engendered, it seemed a
+monstrous thing to Langham that any one should wish to clear North, in
+whose conviction lay his own salvation. More than this, he had every
+reason to hate North, and if he were hanged it would be but a roundabout
+meting out of justice for that hideous wrong he had done him, the shame
+of which was ever present. He saw one other thing clearly, the necessity
+that Gilmore should be left alone; for the very moment the gambler felt
+the judge was moving against him, that moment would come his fierce
+demands that he be called off--that Marshall quiet him, no matter how.
+
+"Have you been near North since his arrest?" asked the judge, apparently
+speaking at random.
+
+"No," said Marshall.
+
+"May I ask if you are offended because of his choice of counsel?"
+
+"That has nothing to do with it!" said the younger man, moving
+impatiently in his chair.
+
+"I do not like your attitude in this matter, Marshall; I like it as
+little as I understand it. But I have given my warning. Keep clear of
+that fellow Gilmore, do not involve yourself in his fortunes, or the
+result may prove disastrous to you!"
+
+"I want him let alone!" said Marshall doggedly, speaking with desperate
+resolution.
+
+"Why?" asked the judge.
+
+"Because it is better for all concerned; you--you don't know what you're
+meddling with--"
+
+He quitted his chair and fell to pacing to and fro. His father's glance,
+uncertain and uneasy, followed him as he crossed and recrossed the room.
+
+"I find I can not agree with you, Marshall!" said the judge at length.
+"I do not like hints, and unless you can deal with me with greater
+frankness than you have yet done, there is not much use in prolonging
+this discussion."
+
+"As you like, then," replied Marshall, wheeling on him with sudden
+recklessness. "I want to tell you just this--you'll not hurt Gilmore,
+but--"
+
+Words failed him, and his voice died away on his white and twitching
+lips into an inarticulate murmur.
+
+He struggled vainly to recover the mastery of himself, but his fear, now
+the growth of his many days and nights of torture, would not let him
+finish what he had started to say.
+
+"Very good, I don't want to hurt anybody, but I do want to find that
+man, whoever he is, that you and Gilmore are shielding; the man Joe
+Montgomery saw cross those sheds the night of the murder; I am going to
+bend my every energy to learning who that man is, and when I have
+discovered his identity--"
+
+"You'll want to see him in North's place, will you?" asked Marshall. The
+words came from him in a hoarse whisper and his arm was extended
+threateningly toward his father. "You're sure about that? You can't
+conceive of the possibility that you'd be glad not to know? You want to
+have John North out of his cell and this other man there in his place;
+you want to face him day after day in the court room--you're sure?" His
+shaking arm continued to menace the judge. "Well, you don't need to find
+Montgomery, and you don't need to hound Gilmore; I can tell you more
+than they can--"
+
+His bloodshot eyes, fixed and staring, seemed starting from their
+sockets.
+
+"The facts you want to know are hidden here!" He struck his hand
+savagely against his breast and lurched half-way across the room, then
+he swung about and once more faced the judge. "Why haven't you had the
+wisdom to keep out of this,--or have you expected to find some one it
+would be easier to pronounce sentence on than North? Did you think it
+would be Gilmore?"
+
+He scowled down on his father. It was appalling and unnatural, after all
+his frightful suffering, his fear, and his remorse which never left him,
+that his safety should be jeopardized by his own father! He had only
+asked that the law be left to deal with John North, who, he believed,
+had so wronged him that no death he could die would atone for the injury
+he had done.
+
+Slowly but inexorably the full significance of Marshall's words dawned
+on the judge. He had risen from his chair dumb and terror-stricken. For
+a moment they stood without speech, each staring into the other's face.
+Presently the judge stole to Marshall's side.
+
+"Tell me that I misunderstand you!" he whispered in entreaty, resting a
+tremulous hand on his son's arm.
+
+But the latter was bitterly resentful. His father had forced this
+confession, from him, he had given him no choice!
+
+"Why should I tell you that now?" he asked, as he roughly shook off his
+father's hand.
+
+"Tell me I misunderstand you!" repeated the judge, in a tone of abject
+entreaty.
+
+"It's too late!" said Marshall, his voice a mere whisper between parched
+lips. He tossed up his arms in a gesture that betokened his utter
+weariness of soul. "My God, how I've suffered!" he said chokingly, and
+his eyes were wet with the sudden anguish of self-pity.
+
+"Marshall!"
+
+The judge spoke in protest of his words. Marshall turned abruptly from
+him and crossed the room. The spirit of his fierce resentment was dying
+within him, for, after all, what did it signify how his father learned
+his secret!
+
+From the parlor there still came the strains of light music; these and
+Marshall's echoing tread as he strode to and fro, filled in the ghastly
+silence that succeeded. Then at length he paused before his father, and
+once more they looked deep into each other's eyes, and the little space
+between was for both as an open grave filled with dead things--hopes,
+ambitions, future days and months and years--days and months and years
+when they should be for ever mindful of his crime! For henceforth they
+were to dwell in the chill of this direful shadow that would tower above
+all the concerns of life whether great or small; that would add despair
+to every sorrow, and take the very soul and substance from every joy.
+
+The judge dropped into his chair, but his wavering glance still searched
+his son's face for some sign that should tell him, not what he already
+knew but what he hoped might be,--that Marshall was either drunk or
+crazed; but he only saw there the reflection of his own terror. He
+buried his head in his hands and bitter age-worn sobs shook his bent
+shoulders. After a moment of sullen waiting for him to recover, Marshall
+approached and touched him on the arm.
+
+"Father--" he whispered gently.
+
+The judge glanced up.
+
+"It's a lie, Marshall!"
+
+But Marshall only stared at him until the judge again covered his face
+with his hands.
+
+When he glanced up a few moments later, he found himself alone. Marshall
+had stolen from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+SHRIMPLIN TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+Beyond the flats and the railroad tracks and over across the new high,
+iron bridge, was a low-lying region much affected by the drivers of
+dump-carts, whose activity was visibly attested by the cinders, the
+ashes, the tin cans, the staved-in barrels and the lidless boxes that
+everywhere met the eye.
+
+On the verge of this waste, which civilization had builded and shaped
+with its discarded odds and ends, were the meager beginnings of a poor
+suburb. Here an enterprising landlord had erected a solitary row of
+slab-sided dwellings of a uniform ugliness; and had given to each a
+single coat of yellow paint of such exceeding thinness, that it was
+possible to determine by the whiter daubs of putty showing through, just
+where every nail had been driven.
+
+Only the very poorest or the most shiftless of Mount Hope's population
+found a refuge in this quarter. The Montgomerys being strictly eligible,
+it was but natural that Joe should have taken up his abode here on the
+day the first of the eight houses had been finished. Joe was burdened by
+no troublesome convictions touching the advantages of a gravelly soil
+or a southern exposure, and the word sanitation had it been spoken in
+his presence would have conveyed no meaning to his mind. He had never
+heard of germs, and he had as little prejudice concerning stagnant water
+as he had predilection for clear water. He knew in a general way that
+all water was wet, but further than this he gave the element no thought.
+
+Thus it came about that his was the very oldest family seated in this
+delectable spot. The young Montgomerys could with perfect propriety
+claim precedence at all the stagnant pools that offered superior
+advantages as yielding a rich harvest of tadpoles. While the mature
+intelligence might have considered these miniature lakes as highly
+undesirable, the young Montgomerys were not unmindful of their
+blessings. As babies, clothed in shapeless garments, they launched upon
+the green slime their tiny fleet of chips, and, grown a little older, it
+was here they waded in the happy summer days. The very dump-carts came
+and went like perpetual argosies, bringing riches--discarded furniture
+and cast-off clothing--to their very door.
+
+In merciful defiance of those hidden perils that lurk where sanitation
+and hygiene are unpractised sciences, Joe's numerous family throve and
+multiplied. The baby carriage which had held his firstborn,--Arthur, now
+aged fourteen,--was still in use, the luster of its paint much dimmed
+and its upholstery but a memory. It had trundled a succession of little
+Montgomerys among the cinder piles; indeed, it was almost a feature of
+the landscape, for Joe's family was his chiefest contribution to the
+wealth of his country.
+
+There had been periods varying from a few days to a few weeks when the
+Montgomerys were sole tenants of that row of slab-sided houses; their
+poverty being a fixed condition, they were merely sometimes poorer. No
+transient gleam of a larger prosperity had ever illuminated the horizon
+of their lives, and they had never been tempted to move to other parts
+of the town where the ground and the rents were higher.
+
+Residents of this locality, not being burdened with any means of
+locomotion beyond their own legs, usually came and went by way of the
+high iron bridge; their legal right of way however was by a neglected
+thoroughfare that had ambitiously set out to be a street, but having
+failed of its intention, presently dwindled to a pleasant country road
+which not far beyond crossed the river by the old wooden bridge below
+the depot.
+
+It was the iron bridge which Mrs. Montgomery, escorted by the daring
+Shrimplin, had crossed that fateful night of her interview with Judge
+Langham, and it was toward it that her glance was turned for many days
+after in the hope that she might see Joe's bulk of bone and muscle as he
+slouched in the direction of the home and family he had so wanted only
+forsaken. But a veil of mystery obscured every fact that bore on the
+handy-man's disappearance; no eye penetrated it, no hand lifted it.
+
+Soon after Montgomery's disappearance his deserted wife fell upon evil
+times indeed. In spite of her bravest efforts the rent fell hopelessly
+in arrears. For a time her pride kept her away from the Shrimplins, who
+might have helped her. To go to the little lamplighter's was to hear
+bitter truths about her husband; Mr. Shrimplin's denunciations were
+especially fierce and scathing, for here he felt that righteousness was
+all on his side and that in abusing the absconding Joe he was performing
+a moral act.
+
+But at last Nellie's fortunes reached a crisis. An obdurate landlord set
+her few poor belongings in the gutter. Even in the most prosperous days
+their roof-tree had flourished but precariously and now it was down and
+level with the dust; seeing which Mrs. Montgomery placed her youngest in
+the ancient vehicle which had trundled all that generation of
+Montgomerys, drew her apron before her eyes and wept. But quickly
+rallying to the need for immediate action she swallowed her pride and
+sent Arthur in quest of his uncle, who was well fitted by sobriety,
+industry and thrift, to cope with such a crisis.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin's only weaknesses were such as spring from an eager
+childlike vanity, and a nature as shy as a fawn's of whatever held even
+a suggestion of danger. To Custer he could brag of crimes he had never
+committed, but an unpaid butcher's bill would have robbed him of his
+sleep; also he wore a very tender heart in his narrow chest, though he
+did his best to hide it by assuming a bold and hardy air and by
+garnishing his conversation with what he counted the very flower of a
+brutal worldly cynicism.
+
+Thus it was that when Arthur had found his uncle and had stated his
+case, Mr. Shrimplin instantly summoned to his aid all his redoubtable
+powers of speech and fell to cursing the recreant husband and father.
+Having eased himself in this manner, and not wishing Arthur to be
+entirely unmindful of his vast superiority, he called the boy's
+attention to the undeniable fact that he, Shrimplin, could have been
+kicked out of doors and Joe Montgomery would not have lifted a hand to
+save him. Yet all this while the little lamplighter, with the boy at his
+heels, was moving rapidly across the flats.
+
+From the town end of the bridge, youthful eyes had descried his coming
+and the word was quickly passed that the uncle of all the little
+Montgomerys was approaching, presumably with philanthropic intent. This
+rumor instantly stimulated an interest on the part of the adult
+population, an interest which had somewhat languished owing to the
+incapacity of human nature to sustain an emotional climax for any
+considerable length of time. Untidy women and idle-looking men with the
+rust of inaction consuming them, quickly appeared on the scene, and when
+the little lamplighter descended from the railway tracks it was to be
+greeted with something like an ovation at the hands of his
+sister-in-law's neighbors.
+
+His ears caught the murmur of approval that passed from lip to lip and
+out of the very tail of his bleached eyes he noted the expression of
+satisfaction that was on every face. Even the previously obdurate
+landlord met him with words of apology and conciliation. It was a happy
+moment for Mr. Shrimplin, but not by so much as the flicker of an
+eyelash did he betray that this was so. He had considered himself such a
+public character since the night of the McBride murder that he now
+deemed it incumbent to preserve a stoic manner; the admiration of his
+fellows could win nothing from the sternness of his nature, so he
+ignored the neighbors, while he was barely civil to the landlord. The
+big roll of bills which, with something of a flourish, he produced from
+the pocket of his greasy overalls, settled the rent, and the neighbors
+noted with bated breath that the size of this roll was not perceptibly
+diminished by the transaction.
+
+Presently Mr. Shrimplin found himself standing alone with Nellie; the
+landlord had departed with his money, while the neighbors, having
+devoted the greater part of the day to a sympathetic interest in Mrs.
+Montgomery's fortunes, now had leisure for their own affairs.
+
+"Why didn't you send for me sooner?" demanded the little man with some
+asperity. "No sense in having your things put out like this when you
+only got to put them back again!"
+
+"If Joe was only here this would never have happened!" said Mrs.
+Montgomery, giving way to copious tears.
+
+But Mr. Shrimplin seemed not so sure of this. The settling of the
+handy-man's difficulties had been one of the few extravagances he had
+permitted himself. His glance now fell on the small occupant of the
+decrepit baby carriage, and he gave a start of astonishment.
+
+"Lord!" he ejaculated, pointing to the child. "You don't mean to tell me
+that's yours, too?"
+
+"Three weeks next Sunday," said Mrs. Montgomery.
+
+"Another one,--well, I don't wonder you've kept still about it! What's
+the use of bringing children into the world when you can't half take
+care of 'em?"
+
+"I didn't keep still about it,--only I had so much to worry me!" said
+Nellie, with a shadowy sort of resentment at the little lamplighter's
+words and manner.
+
+"It's a nice-looking baby!" admitted Mr. Shrimplin, relenting.
+
+"It's a boy, see--he's got his father's eyes and nose--"
+
+"I don't know about the eyes, but the nose is a durn sight whiter than
+Joe's! Maybe, though, when it's Joe's age it will use the same brand of
+paint."
+
+"What you got it in for Joe for? He never done nothing to you!" said
+Joe's wife, with palpable offense.
+
+"He ought to be stood up and lammed over the head with a club!" observed
+Mr. Shrimplin, with considerable acrimony of tone. "You'd have thought
+that being a witness would have made a man out of Joe if anything
+would,--and how does he act? Why, he lights out; he gets to be good for
+something beside soaking up whisky and spoiling his insides, and he
+skips the town; now if that ain't a devil of a way for him to act, I'd
+like to know what you call it!"
+
+"He was a good man--" declared Mrs. Montgomery with conviction. "A good
+man, but unfortunate!"
+
+"Well, if he suits you, Nellie--"
+
+"He does!"
+
+"I'm glad of it," retorted Mr. Shrimplin, taking a chew of tobacco. "For
+I don't reckon he'd ever suit any one else!"
+
+"You and none of my family never liked Joe!" said Mrs. Montgomery.
+
+"Well, why should we?" demanded Mr. Shrimplin impatiently.
+
+"Your wife,--my own sister, too,--said he should never darken her door,
+and he was that proud he never did! You couldn't have dragged him
+there!" said Mrs. Montgomery, and the ready tears dimmed her eyes.
+
+"And you couldn't have dragged him away quick enough if he had a-come!
+Now don't you get tearful over Joe, you can't call him no prodigal; his
+veal's tough old beef by this time! But I never had nothing in
+particular against him more than I thought he ought to be kicked clean
+off the face of the earth!" said Mr. Shrimplin, rolling his drooping
+flaxen mustache fiercely between his stubby thumb and its neighboring
+forefinger.
+
+Such personal relations as the little lamplighter had sustained with the
+handy-man had invariably been of the most friendly and pacific
+description. Esteeming Joe a gentleman of uncertain habits, and of
+criminal instincts that might at any moment be translated into vigorous
+action, Mr. Shrimplin had always been at much pains to placate him. In
+the heat of the moment, however, all this was forgotten, and Mr.
+Shrimplin's love of decency and rectitude promptly asserted itself.
+
+"It's easy enough to pick flaws in a popular good-looking man like Joe!"
+said Mrs. Montgomery, with whom time and absence had been at work, also,
+and to such an extent that the first dim glint of a halo was beginning
+to fix itself about the curly red head of her delinquent spouse.
+
+"And a whole lot of good them good looks of his has done you, Nellie,"
+rejoined Mr. Shrimplin, with a little cackle of mirth.
+
+"He never even seen his youngest!" said Mrs. Montgomery, giving
+completely away to tears at this moving thought of the handy-man's
+deprivation.
+
+"I reckon he could even stand that," observed Mr. Shrimplin unfeelingly.
+"I bet he never knowed 'em apart."
+
+"Why he was just wrapped up in them and me,--just wrapped up!" cried
+Mrs. Montgomery.
+
+"Well, he had a blame curious way of showing it; no one would ever have
+suspected it of him!" said Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"I guess this wouldn't have happened if his own folks had had more faith
+in Joe, that's what wore on him,--I seen it wear on him!" declared Mrs.
+Montgomery, in a tone of melancholy conviction.
+
+"In the main I'm a truthful man, Nellie,--I wish to be anyhow; and I'll
+tell you honest I was never able to see much in Joe aside from his good
+looks, which I know he had, now that you call them to mind. No,--I think
+a coat of tar and feathers would be about the thing for Joe; he's the
+sort of bird to wear that kind of plumage. My opinion is that you've
+seen the last of him; no sense in your thinking otherwise, because
+you're just leaving yourself open to disappointment!"
+
+Yet Mr. Shrimplin remained to reinstate Mrs. Montgomery in her home. It
+was his expert hands that set up the cracked and rusted kitchen stove,
+and arranged the scanty and battered furniture in the several rooms. Nor
+was he satisfied to do merely this, for he presently despatched Arthur
+into town after an excellent assortment of groceries. All the while,
+however, he neglected no opportunity to elaborate for Nellie's benefit
+his opinions concerning the handy-man's utter worthlessness. At length
+this good Samaritan paused from his labors, and regaling himself with a
+fresh chew of tobacco and a parting gibe at Joe, set briskly off for his
+own home.
+
+The street lamps demanded his immediate attention, and it was not until
+his day's work was finished that he found opportunity to tell Mrs.
+Shrimplin of these straits to which Nellie had been reduced. He
+concluded by reiterating his opinion that her sister had seen the last
+of Joe.
+
+"I don't know why you say that!" was Mrs. Shrimplin's unexpected
+rejoinder.
+
+"Ain't I got mighty good reason to say it?" asked her husband. "Don't
+you know, and ain't every one always said Joe was just too low to live?
+I'd like to know if it wasn't you said he should never set his foot
+inside your door?"
+
+"I might say it again, and then I mightn't," rejoined Mrs. Shrimplin,
+with aggravating composure.
+
+Two days later when the Shrimplins were at breakfast Mrs. Montgomery
+walked in on them. Her face was streaked with the traces of recent
+tears, but there was the light of happy vindication in her eyes, and a
+soiled and crumpled letter in her hand.
+
+"Mercy, Nellie!" exclaimed her sister. "What's the matter now?"
+
+"Matter? Why, I'm so happy I just don't know what to do! I've heard from
+my Joe!"
+
+Mrs. Shrimplin rested her hands on her hips and surveyed Nellie with
+eyes that seemed to hold pity and contempt in about equal proportion.
+
+"You've heard from Joe! Well, if he was my husband he'd have heard from
+me long ago!" she said.
+
+And it occurred to Mr. Shrimplin that his wife was wonderfully
+consistent in her inconsistencies.
+
+"Well, and what have _you_ got against Joe?" demanded Mrs. Montgomery
+with ready anger.
+
+"She ain't got nothing new, Nellie!" said Mr. Shrimplin, desirous of
+preserving the peace.
+
+"Well, she's mighty quick to misjudge him! Look!" and she drew from the
+envelope she held in her hand a dirty greenback. "He's sent me twenty
+dollars--my man has! Does that look like he'd forgotten me or his
+children?" protested Nellie, in a voice of happy triumph.
+
+"I'll bet it's counterfeit; I'd go slow on trying to pass it," said Mr.
+Shrimplin when he had somewhat recovered from the shock of the sudden
+announcement.
+
+It was plain that Nellie had never thought of any such possibility as
+this, for the light died out of her eyes.
+
+"How can I find out whether it's good or not?" she faltered.
+
+"Let me look at it!" said Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+Mrs. Montgomery placed the bill in his hands. Her face was keen and
+pinched with anxiety as she awaited the little man's verdict.
+
+"It's genu-ine all right," he at length admitted grudgingly.
+
+"I knew it was!" cried Nellie, her miserable suspicions put at rest.
+
+"Well, you'd better spend it quick and get some good of it before old
+Joe comes back and wants the change!" advised Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"What does he say?" questioned Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+"He don't say a word, there was nothing but the bill."
+
+"Well, maybe it wasn't Joe sent it after all!" said the little
+lamplighter.
+
+"The writing on the envelope's his, I'd know it anywhere. I guess he
+couldn't trust himself to write; but he'll come back, my man will! Maybe
+he's on his way now!" exclaimed Nellie.
+
+"Ain't there no postmark?" asked Mrs. Shrimplin.
+
+"Why, I never thought to look!"
+
+But Nellie's face fell when she did look.
+
+"It was mailed at Denver!" she said, in an awe-struck voice.
+
+Her man seemed at the very ends of the earth, and his return became a
+doubtful thing.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't talk about this to the police or anybody; they ain't
+been able to find Joe, and I wouldn't be the one to tell them where he's
+at!" advised Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"They've stopped coming to the house," said Nellie.
+
+But she looked inquiringly at Mr. Shrimplin. Where the police were
+concerned she had faith in his masculine understanding; Joe had always
+seemed to know a great deal about the police, she remembered.
+
+"I reckon old Joe had his own reasons for skipping out, and they must
+have looked good to him. No, I can't see that you are bound to help the
+police; the police ain't helped you." And Mr. Shrimplin returned to the
+scrutiny of the bill in his hand.
+
+That was the profound mystery. No one knew better than he that Joe was
+not given to such prodigal generosity; neither were twenty-dollar bills
+frequent with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+THE CAT AND THE MOUSE
+
+
+Mr. Gilmore, having yielded once again to temptation, found himself at
+Marshall Langham's door. He asked for the lawyer, but was informed he
+was not at home, a fact of which Mr. Gilmore was perfectly well aware,
+since he had parted from him not twenty minutes before at the
+court-house steps. Mrs. Langham was at home, however, and at this
+welcome information the gambler, smiling, strode into the hall.
+
+From the parlor, Evelyn heard his voice. She had found him amusing in
+the first days of their acquaintance, and possibly she might again find
+him diverting, but this afternoon he had chosen ill for his call. She
+was quite sure she detested him. For the first time she measured him by
+standards of which he could know nothing, and found no good thing in
+him. What had Marsh meant when he forced this most undesirable
+acquaintance on her!
+
+"You wanted to see Marsh?" she asked, as she gave him her hand.
+
+"That will keep," said Gilmore cheerfully. "May I stay?" he added.
+
+"If you wish," she answered indifferently.
+
+She felt a sense of shame at his presence there. Everything about her
+seemed to sink to his level, which was a very low level, she was sure.
+These afternoon calls were a recent feature of their intimacy. Before
+Gilmore came, she had been thinking for the hundredth time of John
+North--the man she had once loved and now hated, but in whose honor she
+had such confidence that she knew he would face death rather than
+compromise her. In spite of the fact that he had scorned her, had thrown
+her aside for another, she had had on his account many a soul-rending
+struggle with her conscience, with her better self. She knew that a word
+from her, and his prison doors would open to a free world. Time and
+again this word had trembled on her lips unuttered. She knew also that
+it was not hate of North that kept her silent. It was an intangible,
+unformed, unthoughtout fear of what might follow after. North, she knew,
+was innocent; who then was guilty? She closed her eyes and shut her
+lips. That North would ultimately clear himself she never seriously
+doubted, and yet the burden of her secret was intolerable. In her
+present mood, she was accessible to every passing influence, and to-day
+it was Gilmore's fate to find her both penitent and rebellious, but he
+could not know this, he only knew that she was quieter than usual.
+
+He seated himself at her side, and his eyes, eager and animated, fed on
+her beauty. He had come to the belief that only the lightest barriers
+stood between himself and Evelyn Langham, and it was a question in his
+mind of just how much he would be willing to sacrifice for her sake. He
+boasted nothing in the way of position or reputation, and no act of his
+could possibly add to the disfavor in which he was already held; but to
+leave Mount Hope meant certain definite financial losses; this had
+served as a check on his ardor, for where money was concerned Gilmore
+was cautious. But his passion was coming to be the supreme thing in his
+life; a fortunate chance had placed him where he now stood in relation
+to her, and chance again, as unkind as it had been kind, might separate
+them. The set of Gilmore's heavy jaws became tense with this thought and
+with the ruthless strength of his purpose. He would shake down one
+sensation for Mount Hope before he got away,--and he would not go alone.
+
+"I suppose you were at the trial to-day?" Evelyn said.
+
+"Yes, I was there for a little while this afternoon," he answered. "It's
+rather tame yet, they're still fussing over the jury."
+
+"How is Jack bearing it?" she asked.
+
+Her question seemed to depress Gilmore.
+
+"Why do you care about how he takes it? I don't suppose he sees any fun
+in it,--he didn't look to me as if he did," he said slowly.
+
+"But how did he _seem_ to you?"
+
+"Oh, he's got nerve enough, if that's what you mean!"
+
+"Poor Jack!" she murmured softly.
+
+"If you're curious, why don't you go take a look at poor Jack? He'll be
+there all right for the next few weeks," said the gambler, watching her
+narrowly.
+
+"I'm afraid Marsh might object."
+
+At this Gilmore threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"Excuse _me_!" he said; and in explanation of his sudden mirth, he
+added: "The idea of your trotting out Marsh to me!"
+
+"I'm not trotting him out to you,--as you call it," Evelyn said quietly,
+but her small foot tapped the floor. She intended presently to rid
+herself of Gilmore for all time.
+
+"Yes, but I was afraid you were going to."
+
+"You mustn't speak to me as you do; I have done nothing to give you the
+privilege."
+
+Gilmore did not seem at all abashed at this reproof.
+
+"If you want to go to the trial I'll take you, and I'll agree to make it
+all right with Marsh afterward; what do you say?" he asked.
+
+Evelyn smiled brightly, but she did not explain to him the utter
+impossibility of their appearing in public together either at the North
+trial or anywhere else for the matter of that; there were bounds set
+even to her reckless disregard of what Mount Hope held to be right and
+proper.
+
+"Oh, no, you're very kind, but I don't think I should care to see poor
+Jack now."
+
+She gave a little shiver of horror as if at the mere idea. This was for
+the gambler, but her real feeling was far deeper than he, suspicious as
+he was, could possibly know.
+
+"Why do you 'poor Jack' him to me?" said Gilmore sullenly.
+
+Evelyn opened her fine eyes in apparent astonishment.
+
+"He is one of my oldest friends. I have known him all my life!" she
+said.
+
+"Well, one's friends should keep out of the sort of trouble he's made
+for himself," observed Gilmore in surly tones.
+
+"Yes,--perhaps--" answered Evelyn absently.
+
+"Look here, I don't want to talk to you about North anyhow; can't we hit
+on some other topic?" asked Gilmore.
+
+It maddened him even to think of the part the accused man had played in
+her life.
+
+"Why have you and Marsh turned against him?" she asked.
+
+The gambler considered for an instant.
+
+"Do you really want to know? Well, you see he wasn't square; that does a
+man up quicker than anything else."
+
+"I don't believe it!" she cried.
+
+"It's so,--ask Marsh; we found him to be an all-right crook; then's when
+we quit him," he said, nodding and smiling grimly.
+
+There was something in his manner which warned her that his real meaning
+was intentionally obscured. She remembered that Marsh had once boasted
+of having proof that she was in North's rooms the afternoon of the
+murder and it flashed across her mind that if any one really knew of her
+presence there it was Gilmore himself. She studied him furtively, and
+she observed that his black waxed mustache shaded a pair of lips that
+wore a mirthless smile, and what had at first been no more than an
+undefined suspicion grew into a certainty. Gilmore shifted uneasily in
+his chair. He felt that since their last meeting he had lost ground with
+her.
+
+"What's the matter,--why do you keep me at arm's length; what have I
+done, anyhow?" he asked impatiently.
+
+"Do I keep you at arm's length? Well, perhaps you need to be kept
+there," she said.
+
+"You should know what brings me here,--why it is I can't keep away--"
+
+"How should I know, unless you tell me?" she said softly.
+
+Gilmore bent toward her, his eyes lustrous with suppressed feeling.
+
+"Isn't that another of your little jokes, Evelyn? Do you really want me
+to tell you?"
+
+"I am dying with curiosity!"
+
+Voice and manner seemed to encourage, and the gambler felt his heart
+leap within him.
+
+"Well, I guess it's principally to see you!" he muttered, but his lips
+quivered with emotion.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Just see how mistaken one may be, Andy; I thought all along it was
+Marsh!"
+
+At her use of his Christian name his heavy face became radiant. His
+purposes were usually allied to an admirable directness of speech that
+never left one long in doubt as to his full meaning.
+
+"Look here, aren't you about sick of Marsh?" he asked. "How long are you
+going to stand for this sort of thing? You have a right to expect
+something better than he has to offer you!"
+
+She met the glance of his burning black eyes with undisturbed serenity,
+but a cruel smile had come again to the corners of her mouth. She was
+preparing to settle her score with Gilmore in a fashion he would not
+soon forget. One of her hands rested on the arm of her chair, and the
+gambler's ringed fingers closed about it; but apparently she was unaware
+of this; at least she did not seek to withdraw it.
+
+"By God, you're pretty!" he cried.
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Mean,--don't you know that I love you? Have I got to make it plain that
+I care for you,--that you are everything to me?" he asked, bending
+toward her.
+
+"So you care a great deal about me, do you, Andy?" she asked slowly.
+
+"I like to hear you call me that!" he said with a deep breath.
+
+"What is it, Andy--what do you want?" she continued.
+
+"You--you!" he said hoarsely; his face was white, he had come to the end
+of long days of hope and doubt; he had battered down every obstacle that
+stood in his path and he was telling her of his love, nor did she seem
+unwilling to hear him. "You are the whole thing to me! I have loved you
+always--ever since I first saw you! Tell me you'll quit this place with
+me--I swear I'll make you happy--"
+
+His face was very close to hers, and guessing his purpose she snatched
+away her hand. Then she laughed.
+
+As the sound of her merriment fell on Gilmore's startled ears, there
+swiftly came to him the consciousness that something was wrong.
+
+"You and your love-making are very funny, Mr. Gilmore; but there is one
+thing you don't seem to understand. There is such a thing as taste in
+selection even when it has ceased to be a matter of morals. I don't like
+you, Mr. Gilmore. You amused me, but you are merely tiresome now."
+
+She spoke with deliberate contempt, and his face turned white and then
+scarlet, as if under the sting of a lash.
+
+"If you were a man--" he began, infuriated by the insolence of her
+speech.
+
+"If I were a man I should be quite able to take care of myself.
+Understand, I am seeing you for the last time--"
+
+"Yes, by God, you are!" he cried.
+
+His face was ashen. He had come to his feet, shaken and uncertain. It
+was as if each word of hers had been a stab.
+
+"I am glad we can agree so perfectly on that point. Will you kindly
+close the hail door as you go out?"
+
+She turned from him and took up a book from the table at her elbow.
+Gilmore moved toward the door, but paused irresolutely. His first
+feeling of furious rage was now tempered by a sense of coming loss. This
+was to be the end; he was never to see her again! He swung about on his
+heel. She was already turning the leaves of her book, apparently
+oblivious of his presence.
+
+"Am I to believe you--" he faltered.
+
+She looked up and her eyes met his. There was nothing in her glance to
+indicate that she comprehended the depth of his suffering.
+
+"Yes," she said, with a drawing in of her full lips.
+
+"When I leave you--if you really mean that--it will be to leave Mount
+Hope!" said he appealingly.
+
+The savage vigor that was normally his had deserted him, his very pride
+was gone; a sudden mistrust of himself was humbling him; he felt
+wretchedly out of place; he was even dimly conscious of his own baseness
+while he was for the moment blinded to the cruelty of her conduct. Under
+his breath he cursed himself. By his too great haste, by a too great
+frankness he had fooled away his chances with her.
+
+"That is more than I dared hope," Evelyn rejoined composedly.
+
+"If I've offended you--" began Gilmore.
+
+"Your presence offends me," she interrupted and looked past him to the
+door.
+
+"You don't mean what you say--Evelyn--" he said earnestly.
+
+"My cook might have been flattered by your proposal; but why you should
+have thought I would be, is utterly incomprehensible."
+
+Gilmore's face became livid on the instant. A storm of abuse rushed to
+his lips but he held himself in check. Then without a word or a glance
+he passed from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+THE HOUSE OF CARDS
+
+
+The long day had been devoted to the choosing of the twelve men who
+should say whether John North was innocent or guilty, but at last court
+adjourned and Marshall Langham, pushing through the crowd that was
+emptying itself into the street, turned away in the direction of his
+home.
+
+For no single instant during the day had he been able to take his eyes
+from his father's face. He had heard almost nothing of what was said, it
+was only when the coldly impersonal tones of the judge's voice reached
+him out of, what was to him silence, that he was stung to a full
+comprehension of what was going on about him. The faces of the crowd had
+blended until they were as indistinguishable as the face of humanity
+itself. For him there had been but the one tragic presence in that dingy
+room; and now--as the dull gray winter twilight enveloped him,--wherever
+he turned his eyes, on the snow-covered pavement, in the bare branches
+of the trees,--there he saw, endlessly repeated, the white drawn face of
+his father.
+
+His capacity for endurance seemed to measure itself against the slow
+days. A week--two weeks--and the trial would end, but how? If the
+verdict was guilty, North's friends would still continue their fight for
+his life. He must sustain himself beyond what he felt to be the utmost
+limit of his powers; and always, day after day, there would be that face
+with its sunken eyes and bloodless lips, to summon him into its
+presence.
+
+He found himself at his own door, and paused uncertainly. He passed a
+tremulous hand before his eyes. Was he sure of Gilmore,--was he sure of
+Evelyn, who must know that North was innocent? The thought of her roused
+in him all his bitter sense of hurt and injury. North had trampled on
+his confidence and friendship! The lines of his face grew hard. This was
+to be his revenge,--his by every right, and his fears should rob him of
+no part of it!
+
+He pushed open the door and entered the unlighted hail, then with a
+grumbled oath because of the darkness, passed on into the sitting-room.
+Except for such light as a bed of soft coal in the grate gave out, the
+room was clothed in uncertainty. He stumbled against a chair and swore
+again savagely. He was answered by a soft laugh, and then he saw Evelyn
+seated in the big arm-chair at one side of the fireplace.
+
+"Did you hurt yourself, Marsh?" she asked.
+
+Langham growled an unintelligible reply and dropped heavily into a
+chair. He brought with him the fumes of whisky and stale tobacco, and as
+these reached her across the intervening space Evelyn made a little
+grimace in the half light.
+
+"I declare, Marsh, you are hardly fit to enter a respectable house!" she
+said.
+
+In spite of his doubt of her, they were not on the worst of terms, there
+were still times when he resumed his old role of the lover, when he held
+her drifting fancy in something of the potent spell he had once been
+able to weave about her. Whatever their life together, it was far from
+commonplace, with its poverty and extravagance, its quarrelings and its
+reconciliations, while back of it all, deep-rooted in the very dregs of
+existence, was his passionate love. Even his brutal indifference was but
+one of the many phases of his love; it was a manifestation of his revolt
+against his sense of dependence, a dependence which made it possible for
+him to love where his faith was destroyed and his trust gone absolutely.
+Evelyn was vaguely conscious of this and she was not sure but that she
+required just such a life as theirs had become, but that she would have
+been infinitely bored with a man far more worth while than Marshall
+Langham. From his seat by the fire Langham scowled across at her, but
+the scowl was lost in the darkness.
+
+"Your father was here last evening, Marsh," Evelyn said at length,
+remembering she had not seen him the night before, and that he had
+breakfasted and gone before she was up that morning.
+
+"What did he come for?" her husband asked.
+
+"I think to see you. Poor man, he doesn't seem able to get the run of
+the hours you keep; I told him he could always find you here between
+four and eight in the morning. I must say this little insight into your
+domestic habits appeared to distress him, but I tried to comfort him,--I
+told him you would probably outlive us all." She laughed softly. "Andy
+was here this afternoon, Marsh," she went on.
+
+"What the devil did he want?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Is he coming back?"
+
+"He didn't mention it, if he is." And again she laughed.
+
+Langham moved impatiently; her low full-throated mirth jarred on his
+somber mood.
+
+"Were you in court to-day, Marsh?" she inquired, after a short silence.
+
+"Yes," he answered briefly.
+
+"Were there many there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Any ladies, Marsh?" she questioned, with sudden eagerness.
+
+"If you can call them that," he growled.
+
+"Do you know, Marsh, I had a strong impulse to go, too. Would you have
+been astonished to see me there?" she asked tentatively.
+
+"We won't have any of that,--do you understand?" he said with fierce
+authority.
+
+"Why not? It's as right for me as it is for any one else, isn't it?"
+
+"I won't _have_ it!" he said, lifting his voice slightly.
+
+She had risen and now stood leaning against the arm of his chair.
+
+"Marsh, he didn't kill McBride; he couldn't,--he wouldn't harm a mouse!"
+
+Her words set him raging.
+
+"Keep quiet, will you,--what do you know about it, anyhow?" he cried
+with sullen ferocity.
+
+"Don't be rude, Marsh! So you don't want me to come to the trial,--you
+tell me I can't?"
+
+"Did my father say anything about this matter,--the trial, I mean?"
+asked Langham haltingly.
+
+"Yes, I think he spoke of it, but I really wasn't interested because you
+see I am so sure John North is innocent!"
+
+He caught one of her hands in his and drew her down on the arm of his
+chair where he could look into her eyes.
+
+"There is just one question I want to ask you, Evelyn, but I expect
+you'll answer it as you choose," he said, with his face close to hers.
+
+"Then why ask it?" she said.
+
+"Why,--because I want to know. Where were you on the day of the
+murder,--between five and six o'clock?"
+
+"I _wish_ you'd let me go, Marsh; you're hurting me--" she complained.
+
+She struggled for a moment to release herself from his grasp, then
+realizing that her effort was of no avail, she quietly resumed her
+former position on the arm of his chair.
+
+"You must answer my question, come--where were you?" Langham commanded.
+
+He brought his face close to hers and she saw that his eyes burnt with
+an unhealthy light.
+
+"How silly of you, Marsh, you know it was Thanksgiving day,--that we
+dined with your father."
+
+"I am not asking you about that,--that was later!"
+
+"I suppose I was on my way there at the hour you mention."
+
+"No, you weren't; you were in North's rooms!"
+
+"If you were not drunk, I should be angry with you, Marsh,--you are
+insulting--"
+
+He quitted his hold on her and staggered to his feet.
+
+"You were with North--" he roared.
+
+"Do you want the servants to hear you?" she asked in an angry whisper.
+
+"Hell!"
+
+He made a step toward her, his hand raised.
+
+"Don't do that, Marsh. I should never forgive you!"
+
+Evelyn faced him, meeting his wild glance with unshaken composure. The
+clenched hand fell at his side.
+
+"My God, I ought to kill you!" he muttered.
+
+She made him no answer, but kept her eyes fixed steadily on his face.
+
+"You _were_ with North!" Langham repeated.
+
+"Well, since you wish me to say it, I was with John North, but what of
+that?"
+
+"In his rooms--" he jerked out.
+
+"No,--now you are asking too much of me!"
+
+"I have proof,--proof, that you went to his rooms that day!" he stormed.
+
+"I did nothing of the sort, and I am not going to quarrel with you while
+you are drunk!"
+
+Drunk he was, but not as she understood drunkenness. In the terrible
+extremity to which his crime had brought him he was having recourse to
+drugs.
+
+"You say you have proof,--don't be absurd, Marsh, you know you haven't!"
+she added uneasily.
+
+"You were with North in his rooms--" he insisted.
+
+He was conscious of a strange wonder at himself that he could believe
+this, and yet aside from such gusts of rage as these, his doubt of her
+made no difference in their life together. Surely this was the measure
+of his degradation.
+
+"I am not going to discuss this matter with you!" Evelyn said.
+
+"Aren't you? Well, I guess you will. Do you know you may be summoned
+into court?"
+
+"Why?" she demanded, with a nervous start.
+
+"North may want to prove that he was in his rooms at the hour the
+murder is supposed to have been committed; all he needs is your
+testimony,--it would make a nice scandal, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Has he asked this?" Evelyn questioned.
+
+"Not yet!"
+
+"Then I don't think he ever will," she said quietly.
+
+"Do you suppose he will be fool enough to go to the penitentiary, or
+hang, to save _your_ reputation?" Langham asked harshly.
+
+"I think Jack North would be almost fool enough for that," she answered
+with conviction.
+
+"Well, I don't,--you were too easy,--men don't risk their necks for your
+sort!" he mocked. "Look here, you had an infatuation for North,--you
+admitted it,--only this time it went too far! What was the trouble, did
+he get sick of the business and throw you over?"
+
+"How coarse you are, Marsh!" and she colored angrily, not at his words,
+however, but at the memory of that last meeting with North.
+
+"It's a damn rotten business, and I'll call it by what name I please! If
+you are summoned, it will be your word against his; you have told me you
+were not in his rooms--"
+
+"I was _not_ there--" she said, and as she said it she wondered why she
+did not tell the truth, admit the whole thing and have it over with. She
+was tired of the wrangling, and her hatred of North had given way to
+pity, yet when Langham replied:
+
+"All right. You are my wife, and North can hang, but he shan't save
+himself by ruining you if _I_ can help it!"
+
+She answered: "I have told you that I wasn't there, Marsh."
+
+"Would you swear that you weren't there?" Langham asked eagerly.
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"Even if it sent him to the penitentiary?" he persisted.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He took her by the shoulders and drew her near to him that he might look
+deep into her eyes.
+
+"Even if it hanged him?" he rasped out.
+
+She felt his hot breath on her cheek; she looked into his face, fierce,
+cruel, with the insane selfishness of his one great fear.
+
+"Answer me,--would you let him hang?" and he shook her roughly.
+
+"Would I let him hang--" she repeated.
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"I--I don't know!" she said in a frightened whisper.
+
+"No, damn you, I can't trust you!" and he flung her from him.
+
+There was a brief silence. The intangible, unformed, unthoughtout fear
+that had kept her silent was crystallizing into a very tangible
+conviction. Marshall had expressed more than the mere desire to be
+revenged on North, she saw that he was swayed by the mastering emotion
+of fear, rather than by his blazing hate of the suspected man. Slowly
+but surely there came to her an understanding of his swift descent
+during the last months.
+
+"Marsh--" she began, and hesitated.
+
+A scarcely articulate snarl from Langham seemed to encourage her to go
+on.
+
+"Marsh, where does the money come from that you--that we--have been
+spending so lavishly this winter?"
+
+"From my practice," he said, but his face was averted.
+
+She gave a frightened laugh.
+
+"Oh, no, Marsh, I know better than that!"
+
+He swung about on her.
+
+"Well," he stormed, "what do you know?"
+
+"Hush, Marsh!" she implored, in sudden terror of him.
+
+He gave her a sullen glare.
+
+"Oh, very well, bring the whole damn thing rattling down about our
+ears!" he cried.
+
+"Marsh,--what do you mean? Do you know that John North is innocent?" She
+spoke with terrifying deliberation.
+
+For a moment they stood staring into each other's eyes. The delicate
+pallor deepened on her face, and she sank half fainting into a chair,
+but her accusing gaze was still fixed on Langham.
+
+He strode to her side, and his hand gripped hers with a cruel force.
+
+"Let him prove that he is innocent if he can, but without help from
+you! You keep still no matter what happens, do you hear? Or God knows
+where this thing will end--or how!"
+
+"Marsh, what am I to think!"
+
+"You can think what you like so long as you keep still--"
+
+There was a hesitating step in the hall, the door was pushed open, and
+Judge Langham paused on the threshold.
+
+"May I come in?" he said.
+
+Neither spoke, and his uneasy glance shifted back and forth from husband
+to wife. In that wordless instant their common knowledge manifested
+itself to each one of the three.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+
+GOOD MEN AND TRUE
+
+
+The North trial was Mount Hope's one vital sensation. Day after day the
+courtroom was filled with eager perspiring humanity, while in their
+homes, on the streets, and in the stores men talked of little else. As
+for North himself, he was conscious of a curious sense of long
+acquaintance with the courtroom; its staring white walls and crowded
+benches seemed his accustomed surroundings, and here, with a feeling
+that was something between fear and weariness, he followed each stage of
+the elaborate game Judge Belknap, for the defense, and Moxlow, for the
+prosecution, were playing, the game that had his life for its stake.
+
+When court adjourned, always in the twilight of those mid-winter
+afternoons, there were his brief comforting interviews with Elizabeth;
+and then the long solitary evenings in his cell; and the longer nights,
+restless and disturbed. The strain told fearfully on his vigor of body
+and mind, his face under imprisonment's pallid mask, became gaunt and
+heavily lined, while his eyes sunk deep in their sockets.
+
+At first he had not believed that an innocent man could be punished for
+a crime of which he had no knowledge; he was not so sure of this now,
+for the days slipped past and the prosecution remained firmly intrenched
+behind certain facts which were in their way, conclusive. He told
+himself with grim humor that the single weak strand in the rope Moxlow
+was seeking to fit about his neck was this, that after all was said and
+proved, the fact remained, he had not killed Archibald McBride!
+
+When the last witness for the state had been examined, North took the
+stand in his own behalf. His cross-examination was concluded one dull
+February day, and there came a brief halt in the rapid progress of the
+trial; the jury was sent from the room while Moxlow and Belknap prepared
+instructions and submitted them to the court. The judge listened
+wearily, his sunken cheek resting against the palm of his thin hand, and
+his gaze fixed on vacancy; when he spoke his voice was scarcely audible.
+Once he paused in the middle of a sentence as his glance fell on the
+heavy upturned face of his son, for he saw fear and entreaty written on
+the close-drawn lips and in the bloodshot eyes.
+
+A little later in the twilight North, with the sheriff at his elbow,
+walked down the long corridor on his way to the jail. The end was close
+at hand, a day or two more and his fate would be decided. The
+hopelessness of the situation appalled him, stupified him. The evidence
+of his guilt seemed overwhelming; he wondered how Elizabeth retained her
+faith in him. He always came back to his thought of her, and that which
+had once been his greatest joy now only filled him with despair. Why had
+he ever spoken of his love,--what if this grim farce in which he was a
+hapless actor blundered on to a tragic close! He would have made any
+sacrifice had it been possible for him to face the situation alone, but
+another life was bound up with him; he would drag her down in the ruin
+that had overtaken him, and when it was all past and forgotten, she
+would remember,--the horror of it would fill her days!
+
+On that night, as on many another, North retraced step by step the ugly
+path that wound its tortuous way from McBride's back office to the cell
+in which he--John North--faced the gallows. But the oftener he trod this
+path the more maze-like it became, until now he was hopelessly lost in
+its intricacies; discouraged, dazed, confused, almost convinced that in
+some blank moment of lost identity it was his hand that had sent the old
+man on his long last journey. As Evelyn Langham had questioned, so now
+did John North: "If not I, then who did murder Archibald McBride?"
+
+In a vain search for the missing handy-man, General Herbert had opened
+his purse wider than North or even Evelyn realized. There seemed three
+possibilities in the instance of Montgomery. Either he knew McBride's
+murderer and testified falsely to shield him; or else he knew nothing
+and had been hired by some unknown enemy to swear North into the
+penitentiary; or--and the third possibility seemed not unlikely--it was
+he himself that had clambered over the shed roof after killing and
+robbing the old merchant.
+
+North turned on his cot and his thoughts turned with him from Montgomery
+to Gilmore, who also, with uncharacteristic cowardliness had fled the
+scene of his illegal activities and the indictment that threatened him
+anew. "What was the gambler's part in the tragedy?" He hated North; he
+loved Marshall Langham's wife. But neither of these passions shaped
+themselves into murderous motives. Langham himself furnished food for
+reflection and speculation. Evidently in the most dire financial
+difficulties; evidently under Gilmore's domination; evidently burdened
+with some guilty knowledge,--but there was no evidence against him, he
+had credibly accounted for himself on that Thanksgiving afternoon, and
+North for the hundredth time dismissed him with the exclamation: "Marsh
+Langham a murderer? Impossible!"
+
+The first cold rays of light, announcing the belated winter's dawn,
+touched with gray fingers the still grayer face of the sleepless
+prisoner. Out of the shadows that they coined came a vision of Evelyn
+Langham. And again for the hundredth time, North was torn between the
+belief that she, by her testimony, might save him and the unconquerable
+determination to keep from Elizabeth Herbert the knowledge of his affair
+with Langham's wife. Better end his worthless existence than touch her
+fair life with this scandal. But of what was Evelyn Langham thinking
+during the days of his trial? What if she should voluntarily break her
+silence! Should he not send for her--there was a sound at his door.
+North started to his feet only to see the fat round face of the deputy
+sheriff as he came bringing the morning's hot coffee and thick buttered
+bread.
+
+The town bell was ringing for nine o'clock when the deputy sheriff again
+appeared to escort him into court, and as they entered the room North
+saw that it was packed to the doors. His appearance won a moment of
+oppressive silence, then came the shuffling of feet and the hum of
+whispered conversation.
+
+At the back of the room sat Marshall Langham. He was huddled up in a
+splint-bottomed chair a deputy had placed for him at one end of the last
+row of benches. Absorbed and aloof, he spoke with no one, he rarely
+moved except to mop his face with his handkerchief. His eyes were fixed
+on the pale shrunken figure that bent above the judge's desk. His
+father's face with its weary dignity, its unsoftened pride, possessed a
+terrible fascination for him; the very memory of it, when he had quitted
+the court room, haunted him! Pallid, bloodless as a bit of yellow
+parchment, and tortured by suffering, it stole into his dreams at night.
+
+But at last the end was in sight! If Moxlow had the brains he credited
+him with, North would be convicted, the law satisfied, and his case
+cease to be of vital interest to any one. Then of a sudden his fears
+would go from him, he would be born afresh into a heritage of new hopes
+and new aspirations! He had suffered to the very limit of his capacity;
+there was such a thing as expiation, and surely he had expiated his
+crime.
+
+Now Moxlow, lank and awkward, with long black locks sweeping the collar
+of his rusty coat, slipped from his chair and stood before the judge's
+desk. For an instant Langham's glance shifted from his father to the
+accused man. He felt intense hatred of him; to his warped and twisted
+consciousness, half mad as he was with drink and drugs, North's life
+seemed the one thing that stood between himself and safety,--and clearly
+North had forfeited the right to live!
+
+When Moxlow's even tones fell on the expectant hush, Langham writhed in
+his seat. Each word, he felt, had a dreadful significance; the big linen
+handkerchief went back and forth across his face as he sought to mop
+away the sweat that oozed from every pore. He had gone as deep in the
+prosecutor's counsels as he dared go, he knew the man's power of
+invective, and his sledge-hammer force in argument; he wanted him to cut
+loose and overwhelm North all in a breath! The blood in him leaped and
+tingled with suppressed excitement, his twitching lips shaped themselves
+with Moxlow's words. He felt that Moxlow was letting his opportunity
+pass him by, that after all he was not equal to the task before him,
+that it was one thing to plan and quite another to perform. Men, such as
+those jurors, must be powerfully moved or they would shrink from a
+verdict of guilty!
+
+But Moxlow persevered in his level tones, he was not to be hurried. He
+felt the case as good as won, and there was the taste of triumph in his
+mouth, for he was going to convict his man in spite of the best criminal
+lawyer in the state! Yet presently the level tones became more and more
+incisive, and Moxlow would walk toward North, his long finger extended,
+to loose a perfect storm of words that cut and stung and insulted. He
+went deep into North's past, and stripped him bare; shabby, mean, and
+profligate, he pictured those few short years of his manhood until he
+became the broken spendthrift, desperately in need of money and rendered
+daring by the ruin that had overtaken him.
+
+Moxlow's speech lasted three hours, and when he ended a burning mist was
+before North's eyes. He saw vaguely the tall figure of the prosecuting
+attorney sink into a chair, and he gave a great sigh of relief. Perhaps
+North expected Belknap to perform some miracle of vindication in his
+behalf, certainly when his counsel advanced to the rail that guarded the
+bench there were both authority and confidence in his manner, and soon
+the dingy court room was echoing to the strident tones of the old
+criminal lawyer's voice. As the minutes passed, however, it became a
+certainty with North that no miracle would happen.
+
+Belknap concluded his plea shortly before six o'clock. And this was the
+end,--this was the last move in the game where his life was the stake!
+In spite of his exhaustion of mind and body North had followed the
+speech with the closest attention. He told himself now, that the state's
+case was unshaken, that the facts, stubborn and damning, were not to be
+brushed aside.
+
+Moxlow's answer to Belknap's plea was brief, occupying little more than
+half an hour, and the trial was ended. It rested with the jury 'to say
+whether John North was innocent or guilty. As the jury filed from the
+room North realized this with a feeling of relief in that that at last
+the miserable ordeal was over. He had never been quite bereft of hope,
+the consciousness of his own innocence had measurably sustained him in
+his darkest hours. And now once more his imagination swept him beyond
+the present into the future; again he could believe that he was to pass
+from that room a free man to take his place in the world from which he
+had these many weary months been excluded. There was no bitterness in
+his heart toward any one, even Moxlow's harsh denunciation of him was
+forgotten; the law through its bungling agents had laid its savage hands
+on him, that was all, and these agents had merely done what they
+conceived to be their duty.
+
+He glanced toward the big clock on the wall above the judge's desk and
+saw that thirty minutes had already gone by since the jury retired.
+Another half-hour passed while he studied the face of the clock, but the
+door of the jury room, near which Deputy-sheriff Brockett had taken up
+his station, still remained closed and no sound came from beyond it. At
+his back he heard one man whisper to another that the jurymen's dinner
+had just been brought in from the hotel.
+
+"That means another three quarters of an hour,--it's their last chance
+to get a square meal at the county's expense!" the speaker added, which
+earned him a neighboring ripple of laughter.
+
+Judge Langham and Moxlow had withdrawn to the former's private room.
+Sheriff Conklin touched North on the shoulder.
+
+"I guess we'd better go back, John!" he said. "If they want us to-night
+they can send for us."
+
+Morbid and determined, the spectators settled down to wait for the
+verdict. The buzz of conversation was on every hand, and the air grew
+thick and heavy with tobacco smoke, while relaxed and at ease the crowd
+with its many pairs of eyes kept eager watch on the door before which
+Brockett kept guard. No man in the room was wholly unaffected by the
+sinister significance of the deputy's presence there, and the fat little
+man with his shiny bald head and stubby gray mustache, silent,
+preoccupied, taking no part in what was passing about him, became as the
+figure of fate.
+
+The clock on the wall back of the judges desk ticked off the seconds;
+now it made itself heard in the hush that stole over the room, again its
+message was lost in the confusion of sounds, the scraping of feet or the
+hum of idle talk. But whether the crowd was silent or noisy the clock
+performed its appointed task until its big gilt hands told whoever cared
+to look that the jury in the John North case had devoted three hours to
+its verdict and its dinner.
+
+The atmosphere of the place had become more and more oppressive. Men
+nodded sleepily in their chairs, conversation had almost ceased, when
+suddenly and without any apparent reason Brockett swung about on his
+heel and faced the locked door. His whole expression betokened a
+feverish interest. The effect of this was immediate. A wave of
+suppressed excitement passed over the crowd; absolute silence followed;
+and then from beyond the door, and distinctly audible in the stillness,
+came the sound of a quick step on the uncarpeted floor. The clock ticked
+twice, then a hand dealt the door a measured blow.
+
+The moment of silence that followed this ominous signal was only broken
+when a deputy who had been nodding half asleep in his chair, sprang
+erect and hurried from the room. As the swinging baize doors banged at
+his heels, the crowd seemed to breathe again.
+
+Moxlow was the first to arrive. The deputy had found him munching a
+sandwich on the court-house steps. His entrance was unhurried and his
+manner quietly confident; he put aside his well-worn overcoat and took
+his seat at the counsel table. A little ripple of respectful comment had
+greeted his appearance; this died away when the baize doors at the back
+of the room swung open again to admit North and the sheriff.
+
+North's face was white, but he wore a look of high courage. He
+understood to the full the dreadful hazard of the next few moments. With
+never a glance to the right or to the left, he crossed the room and took
+his seat; as he settled himself in his chair, Belknap hurried into
+court.
+
+Judge Langham had not yet appeared, and the crowd focused its attention
+on the shut door leading into his private office. Presently this door
+was seen to open slowly, and the judge's spare erect figure paused on
+the threshold. His eyes, sunken, yet brilliant with a strange light,
+shifted from side to side as he glanced over the room.
+
+Marshall Langham had not quitted his seat. There in his remote corner
+under the gallery, his blanched face framed by shadows, his father's
+glance found him. With his hand resting tremulously on the jamb of the
+door as if to steady himself, the judge advanced a step. Once more his
+eyes strayed in the direction of his son, and from the gloom of that
+dull corner which Marshall had made his own, despair and terror called
+aloud to him. His shaking hand dropped to his side, and then like some
+pale ghost, he passed slowly before the eager eyes that were following
+his every movement to his place behind the flat-topped desk on the
+raised dais.
+
+As he sank into his chair he turned to the clerk of the court and there
+was a movement of his thin lips, but no sound passed them. Brockett
+guessed the order he had wished to give, and the big key slid around in
+the old-fashioned lock of the jury-room door. Heavy-visaged and
+hesitating, the twelve men filed into court, and at sight of them John
+North's heart seemed to die within his breast. He no longer hoped nor
+doubted, he knew their verdict,--he was caught in some intricate web of
+circumstance! A monstrous injustice was about to be done him, and in the
+very name of justice itself!
+
+The jurors, awkward in their self-consciousness, crossed the room and,
+as intangible as it was potent, a wave of horror went with them. There
+was a noisy scraping of chairs as they took their seats, and then a
+deathlike silence.
+
+The clerk glanced up inquiringly into the white face that was bent on
+him. A scarcely perceptible inclination of the head answered him, and he
+turned to the jury.
+
+"Gentlemen, have you arrived at a true verdict, and chosen one of your
+number to speak for you?" he asked.
+
+Martin Howe, the first man in the front row of the two solemn lines of
+jurors, came awkwardly to his feet and said almost in a whisper:
+
+"We have. We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment."
+
+"Mr. Howe, do you find this man guilty as charged in the indictment?"
+asked the clerk.
+
+"I do," responded the juror.
+
+Twelve times the clerk of the court, calling each man by name, asked
+this question, and one by one the jurors stood up and answered:
+
+"I do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
+
+THE LAST APPEAL
+
+
+One raw morning late in April, Mark Leanard, who worked at Kirby's
+lumber-yard, drove his team of big grade Percherons up to Kirby's office
+by the railroad tracks.
+
+"What's doing?" he asked of Kirby's clerk.
+
+The clerk handed him a slip of paper.
+
+"Go round and tell Mitchell to get you out this load!" he said.
+
+Leanard went off whistling, with the order slip tucked back of his
+hatband. In the yard, Mitchell the foreman, gave him a load "of
+sixteen-foot" pine boards and "two by fours".
+
+"Where to?" the driver asked, as he took his seat on top the load.
+
+"To the jail, they're going to fence the yard."
+
+"You mean young John North?"
+
+"That's what,--did you think you'd get a day off and take the old woman
+and the kids?" asked Mitchell.
+
+It was a little past eight when the teamster entered the alley back of
+the jail and began to unload. The fall of the first heavy plank took
+John North to his cell window. For a long breathless moment he stood
+there peering down into the alley, then he turned away.
+
+All that day the teams from Kirby's continued to bring lumber for the
+fence, and at intervals North heard the thud of the heavy planks as they
+were thrown from the wagons, or the voices of the drivers as they urged
+their horses up the steep grade from the street. Darkness came at last
+and with it unbroken quiet, but in his troubled slumbers that night the
+condemned man saw the teams come and go, and heard the fall of the
+planks. It was only when the dawn's first uncertain light stole into the
+cell that a dreamless sleep gave him complete forgetfulness.
+
+From this he was presently roused by hearing the sound of voices in the
+yard, and then the sharp ringing blows of a hammer. He quitted his bed
+and slipped to the window; two carpenters had already begun building the
+frame work that was to carry the temporary fence which would inclose the
+place of execution. It was _his_ fence; it would surround his gallows
+that his death should not become a public spectacle.
+
+As they went about their task, the two carpenters stole covert glances
+up in the direction of his window, but North stood well back in the
+gloom of his cell and was unseen. Horror could add nothing to the prison
+pallor, which had driven every particle of color from his cheeks. Out of
+these commonplace details was to come the final tragedy. Those men in
+faded overalls were preparing for his death,--a limit had been fixed to
+the very hours that he might live. On the morning of the tenth of June
+he would see earth and sky from that window for the last time!
+
+Chance passers-by with no very urgent affairs of their own on hand,
+drifted up from the street, and soon a little group had assembled in the
+alley to watch the two carpenters at their work, or to stare up at
+North's strongly barred window. Now and again a man would point out this
+window to some new-corner not so well informed as himself.
+
+Whenever North looked down into the alley that morning, there was the
+human grouping with its changing personnel. Men sprawled on the piles of
+boards, or lounged about the yard, while the murmur of their idle talk
+reached him in his cell. The visible excuse which served to bring them
+there was commonplace enough, but it was invested with the interest of a
+coming tragedy, and North's own thoughts went forward to the time when
+the fence should be finished, when somewhere within the space it
+inclosed would stand his gallows.
+
+Shortly before the noon whistles blew, two little girls came into the
+alley with the carpenters' dinner pails. They made their way timidly
+through the crowd, casting shy glances to the right and left; at a word
+from one of the men they placed the dinner pails beside the pile of
+lumber and hurried away; but at the street corner they paused, and with
+wide eyes stared up in the direction of North's window.
+
+A moment later the whistles sounded and the idlers dispersed, while the
+two mechanics threw down their hammers and took possession of the lumber
+pile. After they had eaten, they lighted their pipes and smoked in
+silent contentment; but before their pipes were finished the crowd began
+to reassemble, and all that afternoon the shifting changing groups stood
+about in the alley, watching the building of the fence. At no time were
+the two carpenters without an audience. This continued from day to day
+until the structure was completed, then for a week there was no work
+done within the inclosure. It remained empty and deserted, with its
+litter of chips, of blocks and of board ends.
+
+On the morning of the first Monday in May, North was standing before his
+window when the two mechanics entered the yard from the jail; they
+brought tools, and one carried a roll of blue paper under his arm; this
+he spread out on a board and both men examined it carefully. Next they
+crossed to the lumber pile and looked it over. They were evidently
+making some sort of calculation. Then they pulled on their overalls and
+went to work, and in one corner of the yard--the corner opposite North's
+window--they began to build his scaffold. The thing took shape before
+his very eyes, a monstrous anachronism.
+
+General Herbert had not been idle while the unhurried preparations for
+John North's execution were going forward; whatever his secret feeling
+was, neither his words nor his manner conceded defeat. Belknap had tried
+every expedient known to criminal practice to secure a new trial but had
+failed, and it was now evident that without the intervention of the
+governor, North's doom was fixed unalterably. Belknap quitted Mount Hope
+for Columbus, and there followed daily letters and almost hourly
+telegrams, but General Herbert felt from the first that the lawyer was
+not sanguine of success. Then on the eighth of June, two days before the
+execution, came a long message from the lawyer. His wife was ill, her
+recovery was doubtful; the governor was fully possessed of the facts in
+North's case and was considering them, would the general come at once to
+Columbus?
+
+This telegram reached Idle Hour late at night, and the next morning
+father and daughter were driven into Mount Hope. The pleasant life with
+its agreeable ordering which the general had known for ten peaceful
+years had resolved itself into a mad race with time. The fearful, the
+monstrous, seemed to reach out and grip him with skeleton fingers. Like
+the pale silent girl at his side, he was knowing the horror of death,
+and a horror that was beyond death.
+
+They stopped at the jail to say good-by to North, and were then driven
+rapidly to the station. The journey of about two hours seemed
+interminable, but they rarely spoke. Elizabeth did not change the
+position she had assumed when they took their seats. She leaned lightly
+against her father's broad shoulder and her hands were clasped in her
+lap.
+
+For weeks the situation had been absolutely pitiless. Their wrecked
+efforts were at the door of every hope, and if this mission failed--but
+it would not fail! All they had come to ask was the life of an innocent
+man, and surely the governor, unaffected by local prejudice, must
+realize John North's innocence.
+
+It was two o'clock when they reached their destination, and as they left
+the car the general said:
+
+"We will go to the hotel first. Either Judge Belknap will be there, or
+there will be some word for us."
+
+At the hotel they found, not Belknap, but a letter which he had left.
+The governor was suffering from a slight indisposition and was confined
+to the house. Belknap had made an appointment for him, and he would be
+expected. The general crushed the sheet of paper between his fingers
+with weary impatience.
+
+"We'll see the governor at once. I'll call a carriage," he said briefly.
+
+Five minutes later, when they had left the hotel, Elizabeth asked:
+
+"What did Judge Belknap say?"
+
+"Nothing, dear, nothing--the matter remains just as it was. The governor
+is expecting us."
+
+"What do you think, father? This is our last hope. Oh, do you realize
+that?"
+
+She rested her hand on his arm.
+
+"It's going to be all right!" her father assured her.
+
+Then there was silence between them until they drew up before the
+governor's house.
+
+Side by side they mounted the steps. The general's ring was answered by
+a man-servant, who took their cards after showing them into a small
+reception-room. He returned after a moment to say that the governor was
+occupied and could not possibly see them until the afternoon. The
+general's face was blank. He had never considered it possible that the
+governor would refuse to see him at his convenience. Certainly there had
+been a time when no politician of his party in the state nor in the
+nation would have ventured this; but it was evident the last ten years
+had made a difference in his position. Elizabeth gazed up fearfully into
+her father's face. What did this mean; was it merely a subterfuge on the
+governor's part to avoid a painful interview? Perhaps, after all, it
+would have been better had she remained at the hotel. Her father read
+her thoughts.
+
+"It's all right--be brave!" he whispered. He turned to the servant.
+"Will you kindly learn for me at what hour the governor will be at
+liberty?" he said stiffly.
+
+"Oh, he must see us!" cried Elizabeth, the moment they were alone.
+
+"Of course he must, and he will," the general said.
+
+But the governor's refusal to see them at once rankled within him. His
+sunburnt cheeks were a brick red and there was an angry light in his
+gray eyes. The servant did not return, but in his stead came a dapper
+young fellow, the governor's private secretary.
+
+"General Herbert?" he asked inquiringly, as he entered the room.
+
+The general acknowledged his identity by an inclination of the head.
+
+"The governor will be most happy to see you at any time after three
+o'clock. May I tell him you will call then?" asked the secretary, and he
+glanced, not without sympathy and understanding, at Elizabeth.
+
+"We will return at three," the general said.
+
+"He regrets his inability to see you now," murmured the secretary, and
+again he permitted his glance to dwell on the girl's pale beauty.
+
+He bowed them from the room and from the house. When the door closed on
+them, Elizabeth turned swiftly to her father.
+
+"He is cruel, heartless, to keep us in suspense. A word, a moment--might
+have meant so much to us--" she sobbed.
+
+A spasm of pain contracted her father's rugged features.
+
+"He will see us; he is a busy man with unceasing demands on his time,
+but we have this appointment. Be brave, dear, just a little longer!" he
+said tenderly.
+
+"I'll try to be, but there is only to-day--and to-morrow--" she
+faltered.
+
+"Hush, you must not think of that!"
+
+"I can think of nothing else!"
+
+How they lived through the long hours the general never knew, but at
+last three o'clock came and they were again at the governor's door. It
+was opened by the servant who had admitted them earlier in the day.
+
+"We have an appointment with the governor," said General Herbert
+briefly, pushing past him.
+
+"Yes, sir; I will tell him you are here as soon as he comes in," said
+the man.
+
+"He's out, then?" and General Herbert wheeled on the man.
+
+"Yes, but he's expected back any moment, sir."
+
+"It will be all right," her father again assured Elizabeth, speaking
+with forced cheerfulness when they were alone.
+
+Ten--twenty minutes slipped by; minutes that were infinitely precious,
+then a step sounded in the hall. It was the servant who entered the
+room, however. He came to say that a message had that moment been
+received from the governor; he was detained at the capitol, and probably
+would not reach home before five o'clock.
+
+"Does he say he will see us there?" asked the general.
+
+"He didn't mention you, sir; perhaps he has forgotten, but I thought
+you'd wish to know."
+
+"Thank you." The general turned to his daughter. "I think we'd better go
+to the capitol."
+
+The carriage was still at the door and they hurried out to it and were
+whirled across town. As they came to a stand before the capitol, General
+Herbert, without waiting for Elizabeth, sprang out and strode into the
+building and up the familiar stairs to the executive chambers. The door
+of the outer office stood open. A colored janitor was sweeping the room.
+
+"Who you want, boss?" he asked, stopping his work and leaning on the
+handle of his broom.
+
+"The governor--where is he?" demanded the general.
+
+"You's too late, boss, he's done gone out."
+
+A sense of futility and defeat almost overwhelmed the old general. He
+was silent for a moment since he dared not trust himself to speak, then
+he asked:
+
+"Is the governor's secretary here?"
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Him and the governor left together. There ain't no one here now,
+they've done for the day."
+
+"Then the governor has gone home?"
+
+"I expect that's where he went, yes, sir."
+
+General Herbert swung about and hurried from the room. In the hall he
+met Elizabeth.
+
+"Did you see him?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"Not here," he answered huskily.
+
+Her eyes grew wide with terror, and she swayed as if about to fall, but
+her father put out a sunburnt hand for her support.
+
+"We must go back!" he said, mastering himself at sight of her suffering.
+"We have missed him here, he's gone home, that is all--it means
+nothing."
+
+They drove in silence through the streets. Pallid, fearful, and
+speechless in her suffering, Elizabeth leaned back in her seat. The hope
+that had sustained her was lost in the realization of defeat. There was
+nothing beyond; this was failure, complete and final; the very end of
+effort! Suddenly her father's big hand closed about the small one which
+rested in her lap.
+
+"You must not give up; I tell you it will be all right!" he insisted.
+
+"He is avoiding us!" she cried chokingly. "Oh, what can we do when he
+will not even see us!"
+
+"Yes, he will. We have been unfortunate, that is all."
+
+"Wretchedly unfortunate!" she moaned.
+
+They had reached their destination, and this time slowly and uncertainly
+they ascended the steps. With his hand upon the bell, the general
+hesitated for an instant; so much was at stake! Then a bell sounded in
+some distant part of the house, and after a brief interval the door was
+opened to them.
+
+"I am sorry, sir, but the governor has not returned."
+
+The general thrust a bill into the man's hand, saying:
+
+"The moment he comes in, see that he gets my card."
+
+Again there was delay. General Herbert, consumed by impatience, crossed
+and recrossed the room. Elizabeth stood by the window, one hand parting
+the heavy curtains. It was already late afternoon. The day had been
+wasted, and the hours that remained to them were perilously few. But
+more than the thought of North's death, the death itself filled her mind
+with unspeakable imaginings. The power to control her thoughts was lost,
+and her terrors took her where they would, until North's very death
+struggles became a blinding horror. Somewhere in the silent house, a
+door opened and closed.
+
+"At last!" said the general, under his breath.
+
+But it was only the governor's secretary who entered the room. He halted
+in the doorway and glanced from father to daughter. There was no
+mistaking the look on his face.
+
+"How much longer are we to be kept in doubt?" asked General Herbert, in
+a voice that indicated both his dread and his sense of insult.
+
+"The governor deeply regrets that there should have been this delay--"
+began the secretary.
+
+"He is ready to see us now?" General Herbert interrupted.
+
+"I regret--"
+
+"What do you regret? Do you mean to tell me that he will not see us?"
+demanded the general.
+
+"The governor has left town."
+
+The angry color flamed into the old man's cheeks. His sorely tried
+patience was on the point of giving way, but a cry from the window
+recalled him.
+
+"Where has he gone?"
+
+"He left for the East at four o'clock," faltered the secretary, after a
+moment of wretched irresolution.
+
+The general's face became white, as his anger yielded to a more powerful
+emotion.
+
+"Impossible!" he cried.
+
+"The North matter has been left in my hands," said the secretary
+haltingly.
+
+The general's hope revived as he heard this. He stepped to Elizabeth's
+side and rested his hand protectingly on her shoulder.
+
+"You have the governor's decision?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," answered the secretary unsteadily.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"What is it?" The general's voice was strained and unnatural.
+
+"He regrets it, but he does not deem it proper for him to interfere with
+the decision of the court. He has had the most eminent legal advice in
+this case--"
+
+A choking inarticulate cry from Elizabeth interrupted him.
+
+"My God!" cried her father, as Elizabeth's groping hands clung to him.
+He felt the shudder that wrenched her slim body. "Be brave!" he
+whispered, slipping his arms about her.
+
+"Oh, father--father--" she sobbed.
+
+"We will go home," said the general.
+
+He looked up from the bowed head that rested against his shoulder,
+expecting to find the secretary still standing by the door, but that
+dapper young man had stolen from the room.
+
+"Yes, take me home," said Elizabeth.
+
+He led her from the house and the door closed behind them on their last
+hope. Both shared in the bitter consciousness of this. They had been
+brought face to face with the inexorable demands of life, they had been
+foredoomed to failure from the very beginning.
+
+"Father?" she gasped.
+
+"Yes, dear?" He spoke with infinite tenderness.
+
+"Is there nothing more?"
+
+"Nothing, but to go home."
+
+Deeply as he felt for her, he knew that he realized only an
+infinitesimal part of her suffering.
+
+"The governor has refused to interfere?"
+
+"You heard what he said, dear," he answered simply.
+
+"And I have to go back and tell John that after all our hopes, after all
+our prayers--"
+
+"Perhaps you would better not go back," he suggested.
+
+"Not go back? No, I must see him! You would not deny me this--"
+
+"I would deny you nothing," said her father fervently.
+
+"Dismiss the carriage, and we will walk to the station; there is time?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a little while they walked on in silence, the girl's hands clasped
+about her father's arm.
+
+"I can not understand it yet!" said Elizabeth at length, speaking in a
+fearful whisper. "It is incredible. Oh, can't you save him--can't you?"
+
+The general did not trust himself to answer her.
+
+"We have failed. Do you think it would have been different if Judge
+Belknap had not been called away?"
+
+General Herbert shook his head.
+
+"And now we must go back to him! We were to have telegraphed him; we
+won't now, will we?"
+
+"My poor, poor Elizabeth!" cried the general brokenly.
+
+"How shall we ever tell him!"
+
+"I will go alone," said the general.
+
+"No, no--I must see him! You are sure we have time to catch our
+train--if we should miss it--" and the thought gave her a sudden
+feverish energy.
+
+"You need not hurry," her father assured her.
+
+"But look at your watch!" she entreated.
+
+"We have half an hour," he said.
+
+"You can think of nothing more to do?" she asked, after another brief
+silence.
+
+"Nothing, dear."
+
+Little was said until they boarded the train, but in the drawing-room of
+the Pullman which her father had been able to secure, Elizabeth's
+restraint forsook her, and she abandoned herself to despair. Her father
+silently took his place at her side. Oppressed and preoccupied, the
+sting of defeat unmitigated, he was struggling with the problem of the
+future. The morrow with its hideous tragedy seemed both the end and the
+beginning. One thing was clear to him, they must go away from Idle Hour
+where North had been so much a part of Elizabeth's life. Nothing had
+been added to this decision when at length the train pulled into Mount
+Hope.
+
+"We are home, dear," he said gently.
+
+[Illustration: She abandoned herself to despair.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
+
+THE LAST LONG DAY
+
+
+A long day, the last of many long days he told himself, was ended, and
+John North stood by his window. Below in the yard into which he was
+looking, but within the black shadow cast by the jail, was the gallows.
+Though indistinguishable in the darkness, its shape was seared on his
+brain, for he had lived in close fellowship with all it emphasized. It
+was his gallows, it had grown to completion under his very eyes that it
+might destroy him in the last hour.
+
+There had been for him a terrible fascination in the gaunt thing that
+gave out the odor of new wood; a thing men had made with their own
+hands; a clumsy device to inflict a brutal death; a left-over from
+barbarism which denied every claim of civilization and Christianity!
+Now, as the moon crept up from behind the distant hills, the black
+shadows retreated, and as he watched, timber by timber the gallows stood
+forth distinct in the soft clear light. In a few hours, unless the
+governor interfered, he would pass through the door directly below his
+window. He pictured the group of grave-faced nervous officials, he saw
+himself bound and blindfolded and helpless in their midst.
+
+His fingers closed convulsively about the iron bars that guarded his
+window, but the feeling of horror that suddenly seized him was remote
+from self-pity. He was thinking of Elizabeth. What unspeakable
+wretchedness he had brought into her life, and he was still to bequeath
+her this squalid brutal death! It was the crowning shame and misery to
+the long months of doubt and fearful suspense.
+
+Up from the earth came the scent of living growing things. The leaves of
+the great maples in the court-house grounds rustled in the spring
+breeze, there was the soft incessant hum of insect life, and over all
+the white wonderful moonlight. But he had no part in this universal
+renewal--he was to die his purposeless unheroic death in the morning.
+For himself he could almost believe he no longer cared; he had fully
+accepted the idea. He had even taken his farewell of the few in Mount
+Hope who had held steadfast in their friendship, and there only remained
+for him to die decently; to meet the inevitable with whatever courage
+there was in his soul.
+
+He heard Brockett's familar step and suddenly, intent and listening, he
+faced the door; but the deputy came slowly down the corridor and as he
+entered the cell, paused, and shook his head.
+
+"No word yet, John," he said regretfully.
+
+"Is the train in?" asked North.
+
+"Yes, Conklin went down to meet it. He's just back; I guess they'll come
+on the ten-thirty."
+
+North again turned listlessly toward the window.
+
+"I wouldn't own myself beat yet, John!" said the deputy.
+
+"I've gone down at every crisis! I didn't think the grand jury would
+indict me, I didn't think I would be convicted at the trial!" He made a
+weary gesture. "What right have I to think they will be able to
+influence the governor?"
+
+There was a moment's silence broken by the deputy.
+
+"I'll be outside, and if you want anything, let me know."
+
+It was the death-watch, and poor Brockett was to keep it.
+
+North fell to pacing his narrow bounds. Without, the wind had risen and
+presently there came the patter of rain on the roof. Thick darkness
+again enveloped the jail yard; and the gallows--his gallows--was no
+longer visible. For an hour or more the storm raged and then it passed
+as swiftly as it had gathered. Once more he became aware of the
+incessant hum of the insect world, and the rustling of the great maples
+in the court-house grounds.
+
+As he listened to these sounds, from somewhere off in the distance he
+heard the shriek of an engine's whistle. They were coming now if they
+came at all! In spite of himself, his hope revived. To believe that they
+had failed was out of the question, and the beat of his pulse and the
+throb of his heart quickened.
+
+He endured twenty minutes of suspense, then he heard voices; Brockett
+threw open the door, and Elizabeth, white-faced and shaking, was before
+him.
+
+"John!" she cried, with such anguish that in one terrible instant all
+hope went from him.
+
+His soul seemed to stand naked at the very gates of death, and the
+vision of his brutal ending came before his burning eyes. Words of
+protest trembled on his lips. This endured but for an imperceptible
+space of time, and then that larger pity which was not for himself but
+for Elizabeth, took him quickly to her side.
+
+"John--" she cried again, and held out her arms.
+
+"Do not speak--I know," he said.
+
+Her head drooped on his shoulder, and her strength seemed to forsake
+her.
+
+"I know, dear!" he repeated.
+
+"We could do nothing!" she gasped.
+
+"You have done everything that love and devotion could do!"
+
+She looked up into his face.
+
+"You are not afraid?" she whispered, clinging to him.
+
+"I think not," he said simply.
+
+"You are very brave, John--I shall try to be brave, also."
+
+"My dear, dear Elizabeth!" he murmured sadly, and they were silent.
+
+Without, in the corridor, an occasional whispered word passed between
+General Herbert and the deputy.
+
+"The governor would do nothing, John," Elizabeth faltered at length.
+
+"I understand, dear," he said tenderly.
+
+"He would not even see us; we went repeatedly to his house and to the
+capitol, and in the end we saw his secretary. The governor had left
+town; he never intended to see us! To reach this end--when nothing can
+be done--" Her eyes grew wide with horror.
+
+He drew her closer, and touched her cold lips with his.
+
+"There is one thing you can do that will be a comfort to me, Elizabeth;
+let your father take you home!"
+
+"No, no, I must stay till morning, until the day breaks--don't send me
+away, John!" she entreated.
+
+"It will be easier--"
+
+Yet his arms still held her close to him, and he gazed down into the
+upturned face that rested against his breast. It was his keen sense of
+her suffering that weighed on him now. What a wreck he had made of her
+life--what infinite compassion and pity he felt! He held her closer.
+
+"What is it, dear?" she asked.
+
+But he could not translate his feeling into words.
+
+"Oh, if there were only something we could do!" she moaned.
+
+"Through all these weeks you have given me hope and strength! You say
+that I am brave! Your love and devotion have lifted me out of myself; I
+would be ashamed to be a coward when I think of all you have endured!"
+
+He felt her shiver in his arms, then in the momentary silence the
+court-house bell struck the half-hour.
+
+"I thought it was later," she said, as the stroke of the bell died out
+in the stillness.
+
+"It is best that you should leave this place, dearest--"
+
+"Don't send me from you, John--I can not bear that yet--" she implored.
+
+Pityingly and tenderly his eyes looked deep into hers. What had she not
+endured for his sake! And the long days of effort had terminated in this
+last agony of disappointment; but now, and almost mercifully, he felt
+the fruitless struggle was ended. All that remained was the acceptance
+of an inexorable fate. He drew forward his chair for her, and as she
+sank wearily into it, he seated himself on the edge of the cot at her
+side.
+
+"McBride's murderer will be found one of these days, and then all the
+world will know that what you believe is the truth," said North at
+length.
+
+"Yes, dear," replied Elizabeth simply.
+
+Some whispered word of General Herbert's or the deputy's reached them in
+the interval of silence that ensued. Then presently in that silence they
+had both feared to break, the court-house bell rang again. It was
+twelve o'clock. Elizabeth rose.
+
+"I am going now--John--" she said, in a voice so low that he scarcely
+heard her. "I am going home. You wish it--and you must sleep--" She
+caught his hands and pressed them to her heart.
+
+"Oh, my darling--good night--"
+
+She came closer in his arms, and held up her lips for him to kiss. The
+passion of life had given place to the chill of death. It was to-day
+that he was to die! No longer could they think of it as a thing of
+to-morrow, for at last the day had come.
+
+"Yes, you must go," he said, in the same low voice in which she had
+spoken.
+
+"I love you, John--"
+
+"As I do you, beloved--" he answered gently.
+
+"Oh, I can not leave you! My place is here with you to the very last--do
+not send me away!"
+
+"I could not bear it," he said steadily. "You must leave Mount Hope
+to-morrow--to-day--"
+
+He felt her arms tighten about his neck.
+
+"To-day?" she faltered miserably. "To-day--"
+
+Her arms relaxed. He pressed his lips to her pale cold lips and to her
+eyes, from which the light of consciousness had fled.
+
+"General Herbert!" he called.
+
+Instantly the general appeared in the doorway.
+
+"She has fainted!" said North.
+
+Her father turned as if with some vague notion of asking assistance, but
+North checked him.
+
+"For God's sake take her away while she is still unconscious!" and he
+placed her in her father's arms. For a moment his hand lingered on the
+general's shoulder. "Thank you--good-by!" and he turned away abruptly.
+
+"Good-by--God bless you, John!" said the general in a strained voice.
+
+He seemed to hesitate for a moment as if he wished to say more; then as
+North kept his back turned on him, he gathered the unconscious girl
+closer in his arms, and walked from the room.
+
+North remained by the window, his hands clutching the bars with
+convulsive strength, then the wind which blew fresh and strong in his
+face brought him the sound of wheels; but this quickly died out in the
+distance.
+
+Brockett tiptoed into the cell.
+
+"I am going to lie down and see if I can get some sleep," North said,
+throwing off his coat. "If I sleep, call me as soon as it is light--good
+night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
+
+ON THE HIGH IRON BRIDGE
+
+
+As the weeks had passed Marshall Langham had felt his fears lift
+somewhat, but the days and nights still remained endless cycles of
+torment. Wherever he turned and with whomsoever he talked the North case
+was certain sooner or later to be mentioned. There were hideous rumors
+afloat, too, concerning General Herbert's activity in behalf of the
+condemned man, and in spite of his knowledge of the law, he was
+profoundly affected by this wild gossip, this ignorant conjecture, which
+reason and experience alike told him misstated every fact that bore on
+the situation. He was learning just how dependent he had been on
+Gilmore; no strange imaginings, no foolish vagaries had ever beset the
+gambler, his brutal vigor had yielded nothing to terror or remorse.
+
+He knew the Herberts had gone to Columbus to make a final appeal to the
+governor. Father and daughter had been driven across the Square by
+Thompson, the Idle Hour foreman, and they had passed below the windows
+of Langham's office on their way to the station. It had seemed to him an
+iniquitous thing that the old statesman's position and influence should
+be brought into the case to defeat his hopes, to rob him of his
+vengeance, to imperil his very safety. Racked and tortured, he had no
+existence outside his fear and hate. All that day Langham haunted the
+railway station. If any word did come over the wires, he wished to know
+it at once, and if General Herbert returned he wished to see him, since
+his appearance must indicate success or failure. If it were failure the
+knowledge would come none too quickly; if success, in any degree, he
+contemplated instant flight, for he was obsessed by the belief that then
+he would somehow stand in imminent peril.
+
+He was pacing the long platform when the afternoon train arrived, but
+his bloodshot eyes searched the crowd in vain for a sight of General
+Herbert's stalwart figure.
+
+"He has just one more chance to get back in time!" he told himself. "If
+he doesn't come to-night it means I am safe!"
+
+His bloodless lips sucked in the warm air. Safe! It was the first time
+in months he had dared to tell himself this; yet a moment later and his
+fears were crowding back crushing him to earth. The general might do
+much in the six hours that remained to him.
+
+He was back at his post when the night train drew in, and his heart gave
+a great leap in his breast as he saw the general descend from the
+platform of the sleeper and then turn to assist Elizabeth. She was
+closely veiled, but one glance at the pair sufficed.
+
+Langham passed down the long platform. The flickering gas-jets that
+burned at intervals under the wide eaves of the low station were
+luminous suns, his brain whirled and his step was unsteady. He passed
+out into the night, and when the friendly darkness had closed about him,
+slipped a feverish palm across his eyes and thanked God that his season
+of despair was at an end. He had suffered and endured but now he was
+safe!
+
+Before him the train, with its trailing echoes, had dwindled away into
+the silence of the spring night. Scarcely conscious of the direction he
+was taking he walked down the track toward the iron bridge. It was as if
+some miracle of healing had come to him; his heavy step grew light, his
+shaking hands became steady, his brain clear; in those first moments of
+security he was the ease-seeking, pleasure-loving Marshall Langham of
+seven months before.
+
+As he strode forward he became aware that some one was ahead of him on
+the track, then presently at the bridge a match was struck, and his
+eyes, piercing the intervening darkness, saw that a man had paused there
+to light a pipe. He was quite near the bridge himself when another match
+flared, and he was able to distinguish the figure of this man who was
+crouching back of one of the iron girders. A puff of wind extinguished
+the second match almost immediately, and after a moment or two in which
+the lawyer continued to advance, a third match was struck; at the same
+instant the man must have heard the sound of Langham's approach, for as
+he brought the blazing match to the bowl of a short black pipe, he
+turned, standing erect, and Langham caught sight of his face. It was Joe
+Montgomery. Another playful gust found Mr. Montgomery's match and the
+two men stood facing each other in the darkness.
+
+Langham had been about to speak but the words died on his lips; a wave
+of horror passed over him. He had known not quite ten minutes of
+security and now it was at an end; his terror all revived; this hulking
+brute who faced him there in the darkness menaced his safety, a few
+drinks might give him courage to go to Moxlow or to the general with his
+confession. How was he to deal with the situation?
+
+"There ain't much Irish about me!" said Montgomery, with a casual oath.
+
+There was a moment of silence. The handy-man was searching his pockets
+for a fresh match.
+
+"Why have you come back, Joe?" asked Langham finally, when he could
+command himself.
+
+Montgomery started violently and his pipe fell from his mouth.
+
+"Is that you, Boss Langham?" he faltered.
+
+He stared about him seeking to pierce the darkness, fearful that Langham
+was not alone, that Gilmore might be somewhere near.
+
+"Are you by yourself, boss?" he asked, and a tremor stole into his
+hoarse throaty voice. He still carried the scars of that fearful beating
+Gilmore had administered.
+
+"Yes," said Langham. "I'm alone."
+
+"I didn't know but Andy Gilmore might be with you, boss," said
+Montgomery, clearing his throat.
+
+"No, he's not here," replied Langham quietly. "He's left town."
+
+"Yes, but he'll be comin' back!" said the handy-man with a short laugh.
+
+"No, he's gone for good."
+
+"Well, I ain't sorry. I hope to God I never see him again--he beat me up
+awful! I was as good a friend as he'll ever have; I was a perfect yellow
+dog to him; he whistled and I jumped, but I'll be damned if I ever jump
+again! Say, I got about eighteen inches of old gas-pipe slid down my
+pants leg now for Mr. Andy; one good slug with that, and he won't have
+no remarks to make about my goin' home to my old woman!"
+
+"You won't have to use it."
+
+"I'm almost sorry," said Montgomery.
+
+"I suppose that thirst of yours is unimpaired?" inquired Langham.
+
+His burning eyes never for an instant forsook the dark outline of the
+handy-man's slouching figure.
+
+"I dunno, boss, I ain't been drinkin' much lately. Liquor's a bully
+thing to keep the holes in your pants, and your toes out where you can
+look at 'em if you want to. I dunno as I'll ever take up
+whisky-drinkin' again," concluded Mr. Montgomery, with a self-denying
+shake of the head.
+
+"Are you glad to be back, Joe?" asked Langham.
+
+It was anything to gain time, he was thinking desperately but to no
+purpose.
+
+"Glad! Stick all the cuss words you know in front of that and it will be
+mild!" cried Montgomery feelingly. "It's pitiful the way I been used,
+just knocked from pillar to post; I've seen dogs right here in Mount
+Hope that had a lot happier time than I've been havin'--and me a married
+man! I've always tried to be a good husband, I hope there won't be no
+call for me to make a rough-house of it to-night!" he added playfully,
+as he looked off across the bridge.
+
+"I guess not, Joe," said Langham.
+
+His fears assembled themselves before him like a phantom host. How was
+he to deal with the handy-man; how would Gilmore have dealt with him?
+Had the time gone by to bully and bribe, or was that still the method by
+which he could best safeguard his life?
+
+"Say, boss, what they done with young John North?" Montgomery suddenly
+demanded.
+
+"Nothing yet," answered Langham after an instant's pause.
+
+"Ain't he had his trial?" Montgomery asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, ain't they done anything with him? If he ain't been sent up, he's
+been turned loose."
+
+"Neither, Joe," rejoined Langham slowly. "The jury didn't agree. His
+friends are trying to get the judge to dismiss the case."
+
+"That would suit me bully, boss, if they done that!" cried the
+handy-man.
+
+Langham caught the tone of relief.
+
+"I don't want to see him hang; I don't want to see no one hang, I'm all
+in favor of livin', myself. Say, I had a sweet time out West! I'd a died
+yonder; I couldn't stand it, I had to come back--just had to!"
+
+He was shaking and wretched, and he exaggerated no part of the misery he
+had known.
+
+"When did you get in?" asked Langham.
+
+"I beat my way in on the ten-thirty; I rode most of the way from
+Columbus on top of the baggage car--I'm half dead, boss!"
+
+"Have you seen any one?"
+
+"No one but you. I got off at the crossin' where they slow up and come
+along here; I wasn't thinkin' of a damn thing but gettin' home to my old
+woman. I guess I'll hit the ties right now!" he concluded with sudden
+resolution, and once more his small blue eyes were turned toward the
+bridge.
+
+"I'll walk across to the other side with you," said Langham hastily.
+
+"The crick's up quite a bit!" said the handy-man as they set foot on the
+bridge.
+
+Langham glanced out into the gloom, where swollen by the recent rains
+the stream splashed and whirled between its steep banks.
+
+"Yes, way up!" he answered.
+
+As he spoke he stepped close to Montgomery's side and raised his voice.
+
+"Stop a bit," said Joe halting. "I shan't need this now," and he drew
+the piece of gas-pipe from his trousers pocket. "I'd have hammered the
+life out of Andy Gilmore!" he said, as he tossed the ugly bludgeon from
+him.
+
+"You haven't told me where you have been," said Langham, and once more
+he pressed close to Montgomery, so close their elbows touched.
+
+The handy-man moved a little to one side.
+
+"Where _ain't_ I been, you better ask, boss," he said. "I seen more
+rotten cities and more rotten towns and more rotten country than you can
+shake a stick at; God A'mighty knows what's the good of it--I dunno!
+Everybody I seen was strangers to me, never a face I knowed anywhere;
+Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver--to hell with 'em all, boss; old
+Mount Hope's good enough for me!" And the handy-man shrugged his huge
+slanting shoulders.
+
+"Don't go so fast, Joe!" Langham cautioned, and his eyes searched the
+darkness ahead of them.
+
+"It's a risky business for you, boss," said the handy-man. "You ain't
+used to this bridge like me."
+
+"Do you always come this way?" asked Langham.
+
+"Always, in all seasons and all shapes, drunk or sober, winter or
+summer," said the handy-man.
+
+"One wouldn't have much chance if he slipped off here to-night," said
+Langham with a shudder.
+
+"Mighty little," agreed Montgomery. "Say, step over, boss--we want to
+keep in the middle! There--that's better, I was clean outside the rail."
+
+"Can you swim?" asked Langham.
+
+"Never swum a stroke. The dirt's good enough for me; I got a notion that
+these here people who are always dippin' themselves are just naturally
+filthy. Look at me, a handy-man doing all kinds of odd jobs, who's got a
+better right to get dirty--but I leave it alone and it wears off. I'm
+blame certain you won't find many people that fool away less money on
+soap than just me!" said Joe with evident satisfaction. "The old woman's
+up!" he cried, as he caught the glimmer of a light on the shore beyond.
+
+Perhaps unconsciously he quickened his pace.
+
+"Not so fast, Joe!" gasped Langham.
+
+"Oh, all right, boss!" responded Montgomery.
+
+Langham turned to him quickly, but as he did so his foot struck the
+cinder ballast of the road-bed.
+
+"Good night, boss!" said Joe, his eyes fixed on the distant light.
+
+"Wait!" said Langham imperiously.
+
+"What for?" demanded Montgomery.
+
+"The water made such a noise I couldn't talk to you out on the bridge,"
+began Langham.
+
+"Well, I can't stop now, boss," said the handy-man, turning impatiently
+from him.
+
+"Yes, damn you--you can--and will!" and Langham raised his voice to give
+weight to his words.
+
+Montgomery rounded up his shoulders.
+
+"Don't you try that, boss! Andy Gilmore could shout me down and cuss me
+out, but you can't; and I'll peel the face off you if you lay hands on
+me!" He thrust out a grimy fist and menaced Langham with it. There was a
+brief silence and the handy-man swung about on his heel.
+
+"Good night, boss!" he said over his shoulder, as he moved off.
+
+Langham made no answer, but long after Joe's shuffling steps had died
+away in the distance he was still standing there irresolute and
+undecided, staring fixedly off into the darkness that had swallowed up
+the handy-man's hulking figure.
+
+Mr. Montgomery, muttering somewhat and wagging his head, continued along
+the track for a matter of a hundred yards, when his feet found a narrow
+path which led off in the direction of the light he had so confidently
+declared was his old woman's. Then presently as he shuffled forward, the
+other seven houses of the row of which his was the eighth, cloaked in
+utter darkness, took shadowy form against the sky. The handy-man
+stumbled into his unkempt front yard, its metes and bounds but
+indifferently defined by the remnants of what had been a picket fence;
+he made his way to the side door, which he threw open without ceremony.
+As he had surmised, his old woman was up. She was seated by the table in
+the corner, engaged in mending the ragged trousers belonging to Joseph
+Montgomery, junior.
+
+At sight of Joe, senior, she screamed and flung them aside; then white
+and shaking she came weakly to her feet. The handy-man grinned genially.
+He was not of demonstrative temperament.
+
+"Joe!" cried Nellie, as she sprang toward him. "Dear Joe!" and she threw
+her arms about him.
+
+"Oh, hell!" said the handy-man.
+
+Nellie was hanging limply about his neck and he was aware that she had
+kissed him; he could not remember when before she had taken such a
+liberty. Mr. Montgomery believed in a reasonable display of affection,
+but kissing seemed to him a singularly frivolous practice.
+
+"Oh, my man!" sobbed Nellie.
+
+"Oh, cheese it, and let me loose--I don't like this to-do! Can't a
+married man come home without all this fuss?"
+
+"Dear Joe, you've come back to me and your babies!" And the tears
+streamed down her cheeks.
+
+"I don't need you to tell me that--I got plenty sense enough to know
+when I'm home!" said Montgomery, not without bitterness.
+
+"I mourned you like you was passed away, until your letter come!" said
+Nellie, and the memory of her sufferings set her sobbing afresh.
+
+"Oh, great hell!" exclaimed Joe dejectedly. "Why can't you act
+cheerful? What's the good of takin' on, anyhow--I don't like tombstone
+talk."
+
+"It was just the shock of seein' you standin' there in the door like I
+seen you so often!" said Nellie weakly.
+
+"If that ain't a woman for you, miserable because she's happy. Say, stop
+chokin' me; I won't stand for much more of this nonsense, you might know
+I don't like these to-dos!"
+
+"You don't know what I've suffered, Joe!"
+
+"That's a woman for you every time--always thinkin' of herself! To hear
+you talk any one would think I'd been to a church picnic; I look like
+I'd been to a picnic, don't I? Yes, I do--like hell!"
+
+"They said you would never come back to me," moaned Nellie.
+
+"Who said that?" asked Mr. Montgomery aggressively.
+
+"Everybody--the neighbors--Shrimplin--they all said it!"
+
+"Ain't I told you never to listen to gossip, and ain't I always done
+what's right?" interrogated the handy-man severely.
+
+"Yes, always, Joe," said Nellie.
+
+"Then you might know'd I'd come back when I got plenty good and ready. I
+fooled 'em all, and I'm here to stay--that is if you keep your hands off
+me!"
+
+"You mean it, Joe?" asked Nellie.
+
+"What? About your keepin' your hands off me? Yes, you bet I do!"
+
+And Montgomery by a not ungentle effort released himself from his wife's
+embrace. This act so restored his self-respect that he grinned
+pleasantly at her.
+
+"I don't know when I been so happy, Joe--it's awful nice to have you
+back!" said Nellie, wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron.
+
+"There's some sense in your sayin' that," said the handy-man, shaking
+his head. "You ought to feel happy."
+
+"You don't ask after your children, Joe.--"
+
+"Don't I? Well, maybe you don't give me no time to!" said Mr.
+Montgomery, but without any special enthusiasm, since the truth was that
+his interest in his numerous offspring was most casual.
+
+"They're all well, and the littlest, Tom--the one you never seen--has
+got his first tooth!" said Nellie.
+
+Joe grunted at this information.
+
+"He'll have more by and by, won't he?" he said.
+
+"How you talk, of course he will!"
+
+"He'd have a devil of a time chewin' his food if he didn't," observed,
+the handy-man with a throaty chuckle.
+
+"And, Joe, I got the twenty dollars you sent!"
+
+"Is any of it left?" inquired Mr. Montgomery, with sudden interest.
+
+"The rent and things took it all. That was the noblest act you ever
+done, Joe; it made me certain you was thinkin' of us, and from the
+moment I got that money I was sure you would come back no matter what
+people said!"
+
+"Humph!" said Joe. "Is there anything in the house fit to eat? Because
+if there is, I'll feed my face right now!"
+
+"Do set down, Joe; I'll have something for you in a minute--why didn't
+you tell me you was hungry?"
+
+She was already rattling plates and knives at the cupboard, and Joe took
+the chair she had quitted when he entered the house, stretching his legs
+under his own table with a sense of deep satisfaction. He had not
+considered it worth his while to visit the kitchen sink, although his
+mode of life, as well as his mode of travel for days past, had covered
+him with dust and grime; nor did he take off his ragged cap. It had
+always been his custom to wear it in the privacy of his own home, it was
+one of the last things he removed before going to bed at night; at all
+other times it reposed on the top of his curly red head as the only safe
+place for a cap to be.
+
+"I was real worried about Arthur along in March," said Mrs. Montgomery,
+as such odds and ends as had survived the appetites of all the little
+Montgomerys began to assemble themselves on the table.
+
+"What's he been a-doin'?" inquired Arthur's father.
+
+"It was his chest," explained Nellie.
+
+Joe grunted. By this time his two elbows were planted on the edge of the
+table and his mouth was brought to within six scant inches of his plate.
+The handy-man's table manners were not his strong point.
+
+"Oh, I guess his chest is all right!" he paused to say.
+
+"I thought it was best to be on the safe side, so I took him up-town and
+had his health examined by a doctor. He had to take off his shirt so he
+could hear Arthur's lungs."
+
+"Well, I'm damned,--what did he do that for?" cried Joe, profoundly
+astonished.
+
+"It was a mercy I'd washed him first," added Nellie, not comprehending
+the reason of her husband's sudden show of interest though gratified by
+it.
+
+"Lord, I thought you meant the doctor had took off his shirt!" said Joe.
+"He's all right now, ain't he?"
+
+"Yes, but he did have such an alarmin' cough; it hung on and hung on, it
+seemed to me like it was on his chest, but the doctor said no, and I was
+that relieved! I used some of the twenty dollars to pay him and to get
+medicine from the drug store."
+
+Joe was cramming his mouth full of cold meat and bread, and for the
+moment could not speak; when at length he could and did, it was to say:
+
+"I hear Andy Gilmore's left town?"
+
+"Yes, all of a sudden, and no one knows where he's gone!"
+
+"I guess he's had enough of Mount Hope, and I guess Mount Hope's had
+enough of him!" remarked Joe.
+
+"They say the police was goin' to stop the gamblin' in his rooms if he
+hadn't gone when he did."
+
+"Well, I hope he'll catch hell wherever he is!" said Joe, with a sullen
+drop to his voice.
+
+"For a while after you left, Joe, they didn't give me no peace at
+all--the police and detectives, I mean--they was here every day! And
+Shrimplin told me they was puttin' advertisements in the papers all over
+the country."
+
+"What for?" inquired Montgomery uneasily.
+
+"They wanted to find out where you'd gone; it seemed like they was
+determined to get you back as a witness for the trial," explained
+Nellie.
+
+Montgomery's uneasiness increased. He began to wonder fearfully if he
+was in any danger, vague forebodings assailed him. Suppose he was
+pinched and sent up. His face blanched and his small blue eyes slid
+around in their sockets. Nellie was evidently unaware of the feeling of
+terror her words had inspired, for she continued:
+
+"But it didn't make no difference in the end that you wasn't here, for
+everybody says it was you that hanged John North; you get all the credit
+for that!"
+
+Montgomery's hands fell at his side.
+
+"Me hanged John North! _Me hanged John North!_" he repeated. "But he
+ain't hanged--God A'mighty, he ain't hanged yet!"
+
+His voice shot up into a wail of horrified protest. Nellie regarded him
+with a look of astonishment. She had been rather sorry for young John
+North, but she had also felt a certain wifely pride in Joe's connection
+with the case.
+
+"No, he ain't hanged yet but he will be in the morning!" she said.
+
+The handy-man sprang to his feet, knocking over the chair in which he
+had been seated.
+
+"What's that?" he roared.
+
+"Why, haven't you heard? He's to be hung in the morning."
+
+Joe glared at her with starting eyes.
+
+"What will they do that for--hang him--hang John North!" He tore off his
+ragged cap and dashed it to the floor at his feet. "To hell with Andy
+Gilmore and to hell with Marsh Langham--that's why they drove me out of
+town--to hell with 'em both!" he shouted, and his great chest seemed
+bursting with pent-up fury.
+
+"Why, whatever do you mean, Joe?" cried Nellie.
+
+"He never done it--you hear me--and they _know_ it! You sure you got the
+straight of this--they are goin' to hang young John North?" He seized
+her roughly by the shoulders.
+
+"Yes--how you take on, Joe--"
+
+"Take on!" he shouted. "You'd take on too if you stood in my place.
+You're sure you know what you're talkin' about?"
+
+"I seen the fence around the jail yard where they're goin' to hang him;
+I went over on purpose yesterday with one of the neighbors and took
+Arthur; I thought it would be improvin', but he'd seen it before. There
+ain't much he don't see--for all I can do he just runs the streets."
+
+Joe's resolution had been formed while she was speaking, and now he
+snatched his ragged cap from the floor.
+
+"You stay right here till I get back!" he said gruffly.
+
+It was not his habit to discuss affairs of any moment with Mrs.
+Montgomery, since in a general way he doubted the clearness of the
+feminine judgment, and in the present instance he had no intention of
+taking her into his confidence. The great problem by which he was
+confronted he would settle in his own fashion.
+
+"You ain't in any trouble, Joe?" and Nellie's eyes widened with the
+birth of sudden fear.
+
+The handy-man was standing by the door, and she went to his side.
+
+"Me? No, I guess not; but I got an everlastin' dose of it for the other
+fellow!" and he reached for the knob.
+
+"Was it what I said about the police wantin' you?" his wife asked
+timidly.
+
+She knew that his dealings with the police had never been of an
+especially fortunate nature. He shook off the hand she had placed on his
+arm.
+
+"You keep your mouth shut till I get back!" he said, and pushing open
+the door, passed out.
+
+The night had cleared since he crossed the bridge, and from the great
+blue arch of heaven the new moon gave her radiance to a sleeping world.
+But Montgomery was aware only of his purpose as he slouched along the
+path toward the railroad track. The horror of North's fate had fixed his
+determination, nothing of terror or fear that he had ever known was
+comparable to the emotion he was experiencing now. He did not even
+speculate on the consequences to himself of the act he had decided on.
+They said that he had hanged John North--he got the credit for
+that--well, John North wasn't hanged yet! He tossed his arms aloft. "My
+God, I didn't mean to do that!" he muttered.
+
+He had gained the railroad tracks and was running toward the bridge, the
+very seconds seemed of infinite value to him, for suppose he should have
+difficulty in finding Moxlow? And if he found the prosecuting attorney,
+would he believe his story? A shudder passed through him. He was quite
+near the bridge when suddenly he paused and a whispered curse slipped
+from between his parted lips. A man was standing at the entrance to the
+bridge and though it was impossible to distinguish more than the shadowy
+outline of his figure, Montgomery was certain that it was Marshall
+Langham. His first impulse was to turn back and go into town by the
+wagon road and the wooden bridge, but as he hesitated the figure came
+toward him, and Langham spoke.
+
+"Is that you, Joe?" he asked.
+
+"Damn him, he knows I won't stand for hangin' North!" the handy-man told
+himself under his breath. He added aloud as he shuffled forward, "Yes,
+it's me, boss!"
+
+"Couldn't you make it right with Nellie?" asked Langham.
+
+"Oh, it isn't that--the old woman's all right--but the baby's sick and
+I'm out huntin' a doctor."
+
+He did not expect Langham to believe him, but on the spur of the moment
+he could think of nothing better.
+
+"I am sorry to hear that!" said Langham.
+
+An evil wolfish light stole into his eyes and the lines of his weak
+debauched face hardened.
+
+"What's the matter with you, boss; couldn't you get across?" asked Joe.
+
+"No, the bridge is too much for me. Like a fool I stopped here to smoke
+a cigar after you left me; I hoped it would clear off a bit so I could
+see the ties, but it's worse now that I can. I had about made up my mind
+to come and get you to help me back into town."
+
+"Come along, boss, I'm in a terrible hurry!" said Joe eagerly.
+
+But Langham was a pace or two in advance of him when they stepped out
+on the bridge. Never once did he glance in the handy-man's direction.
+Had he done so, Montgomery must have been aware that his face showed
+bloodless in the moonlight, while his sunken eyes blazed with an
+unaccustomed fire.
+
+"I can't walk these ties, Joe--give me your hand--" he managed to say.
+
+Joe did as he desired, and as the lawyer's slim fingers closed about his
+great fist he was conscious that a cold moisture covered them. He could
+only think of a dead man's hand.
+
+"What's wrong with the baby, Joe?" Langham asked.
+
+"Seems like it's got a croup," said Joe promptly.
+
+"That's too bad--"
+
+"Yes, it's a hell of a pity," agreed Montgomery.
+
+He was furtively watching Langham out of the corners of his beady blue
+eyes; his inner sense of things told him it was well to do this. They
+took half a dozen steps and Langham released Joe's hand.
+
+"I wonder if I can manage this alone!" he said. But apparently the
+attempt was a failure, for he quickly rested his hand on his companion's
+massive shoulder.
+
+They had reached the second of the bridge's three spans. Below them in
+the darkness the yellow flood poured in noisy volume. As Langham knew,
+here the stream was at its deepest and its current the swiftest. He knew
+also that his chance had come; but he dared not make use of it. The
+breath whistled from his lips and the moisture came from every pore. He
+sought frantically to nerve himself for the supreme moment; but suppose
+he slipped, or suppose Joe became aware of his purpose one second too
+soon!
+
+"Keep over a bit, boss!" said the handy-man suddenly. "You are crowding
+me off the bridge!"
+
+"Oh, all right; is that better?"
+
+And Langham moved a step aside.
+
+"A whole lot," responded Joe gruffly. But his little blue eyes, alert
+with cunning, were never withdrawn from the lawyer for an instant.
+
+They walked forward in silence for a moment or two, and were approaching
+the end of the center span, when the lawyer glanced about him wildly; he
+realized that he was letting slip his one great opportunity. Again Joe
+spoke:
+
+"Keep over, boss!" And then all in the same breath, "What the hell are
+you up to, anyway?"
+
+It must be now or it would be never; and Langham, turning swiftly,
+hurled himself on his companion, and his slim fingers with their
+death-like chill gripped Joe's hairy throat. In the suddenness of the
+attack he was forced toward the edge of the bridge. The rush of the
+noisy waters sounded with fearful distinctness in his ears.
+
+"Here, damn you, let go!" panted Montgomery.
+
+[Illustration: "Here, let go!" panted Montgomery.]
+
+He felt Langham's hot breath on his cheek, he read murder by the wolfish
+light in his eyes. He wrenched himself free of the other's desperate
+clutch, but as he did so his foot caught against one of the rails and he
+slipped and fell to his knees. In the intervals of his own labored
+breathing, he heard the flow of the river, a dull ceaseless roar, and
+saw the flashing silver of the moon's rays as they touched the water's
+turgid surface. Langham no longer sought to force him from the bridge,
+but bent every effort to thrust him down between the ties to a swift and
+certain death.
+
+"You want to kill me, too!" panted Montgomery, as by a mighty effort
+that brought the veins on neck and forehead to the point of bursting, he
+regained his footing on the ties.
+
+But his antagonist was grimly silent, and Joe, roused to action by fear,
+and by a sullen rage at what he deemed the lawyer's perfidy, turned and
+grappled with him. Once he smashed his great fist full into Langham's
+face, and though the blow sent the lawyer staggering across the bridge,
+he recovered himself quickly and rushed back to renew the fight.
+Montgomery greeted him with an oath, and they grappled again.
+
+Langham had known in his calmer moments when he planned Joe's death,
+that his only hope of success lay in the suddenness of his attack. Now
+as they swayed on the very edge of the bridge the handy-man put forth
+all his strength and lifted the lawyer clear of the ties, then with a
+mighty heave of his great shoulders he tossed him out into space.
+
+There was a scarcely audible splash and Joe, looking fearfully down, saw
+the muddy drops turn limpid in the soft white light. A moment later some
+dark object came to the surface and a white face seemed to look up into
+his, but only for a second, and then the restless flood bore it swiftly
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
+
+CUSTER'S IDOL FALLS
+
+
+Early that same night Mr. Shrimplin, taking Custer with him, had driven
+out into the country. Their destination was a spot far down the river
+where catfish were supposed to abound, for Izaak Walton's gentle art was
+the little lamplighter's favorite recreation. After leaving Mount Hope
+they jogged along the dusty country road for some two miles, then
+turning from it into a little-traveled lane they soon came out upon a
+great sweeping bend of the stream.
+
+"I don't know about this, Custer," said Mr. Shrimplin, with a doubtful
+shake of the head, as he drew rein. "She's way up. I had no idea she was
+way up like this; I guess though we can't do no better than to chance
+it, catfish is a muddy-water fish, anyhow."
+
+He tied wild Bill to a blasted sycamore, and then, while he cut poles
+from the willow bushes that grew along the bank, Custer built a huge
+bonfire, by the light of which they presently angled with varying
+fortunes.
+
+"I reckon not many people but me knows about this fishing-hole!" said
+Shrimplin, as he cast his baited hook into the water.
+
+"Where did you learn to fish?" asked Custer, thirsting for that wisdom
+his father was so ready to impart.
+
+"I guess you'd call it a natural gift in my case, son," said the little
+lamplighter modestly. "I don't know as I deserve no credit; it's like
+playing the organ or walking on a tight rope, the instinct's got to be
+there or you'll only lay yourself open to ridicule."
+
+But truth to tell, fishing was no very subtle art as practised by Mr.
+Shrimplin, he merely spat on his bait before he dropped it into the
+water. Even Custer knew that every intelligent fisherman did this, you
+couldn't reasonably hope to catch anything unless you did; yet there
+seemed to him, when he now thought of it, such a gap between cause and
+effect that he asked as he warily watched his cork:
+
+"What good does it do to spit on your hook?"
+
+"I've forgot the science of it, Custer," admitted his father after a
+moment's thought. "But I've always heard old fishermen say you couldn't
+catch nothing unless you did."
+
+"Did you ever try to?"
+
+"I can't say as I ever did. What would be the use when you know better?"
+said Mr. Shrimplin, who was strictly orthodox. His cork went under and
+he landed a flopping shiner on the bank; this he took from his hook and
+tossed back into the water. "It's a funny thing about shiners!" he
+said.
+
+"What is?" inquired Custer.
+
+"Why, you always catch 'em when you ain't fishing for 'em. You fish for
+catfish or sun-dabs, or bass even, if you're using worms, and you catch
+shiners; mainly, I suppose, because they are no manner of use to you. I
+reckon if you fished for shiners you wouldn't catch anything,--you
+couldn't--because there is no more worthless fish that swims! That's why
+fishing is like life; in fact, you can't do nothing that ain't like
+life; but I don't know but what catching shiners ain't just a little bit
+more like life than anything else! You think you're going to make a lot
+of money out of some job you've got, but it shaves itself down to half
+by the time it reaches you; or you've got to cough up double what you
+counted on when it's the other way about; so it works out the same
+always; you get soaked whether you buy or sell, from the cradle to the
+grave you're always catching shiners!" While Mr. Shrimplin was still
+philosophizing big drops of warm spring rain began to splash and patter
+on the long reach of still water before them. He scrambled to his feet.
+"We are going to have some weather, Custer!" he said, and they had
+scarcely time in which to drive Bill under the shelter of a disused hay
+barracks in an adjacent field, when the storm broke with all its fury.
+Here they spent the better part of an hour, and when at last the rain
+ceased they climbed into the cart and turned Bill's head in the
+direction of home.
+
+"I hope, Custer, that your ma won't be scared; it's getting mighty
+late," said the senior Shrimplin, and he shook his head as if in pity of
+a human weakness which his mind grasped, though he could not share in
+it. "Seems to be that people give way more and more to their fear than
+they used to; or maybe it is that I ask too much, being naturally nervy
+myself and not having no nerves, as I may say."
+
+Half an hour later, off in the distance, the lights of Mount Hope became
+visible to Custer and his father.
+
+"I'd give a good deal for a glass of suds and a cracker right now!" said
+Mr. Shrimplin, speaking after a long silence. He tilted his head and
+took a comprehensive survey of the heavens. "Well, we're going to have a
+fine day for the hanging," he observed, with the manner of a
+connoisseur.
+
+"Why won't they let no one see it?" demanded Custer.
+
+"It's to be strictly private. I don't know but what that's best; it's
+some different though from the hangings I'm used to." And Mr. Shrimplin
+shook his head dubiously as if he wished Custer to understand that after
+all perhaps he was not so sure it was for the best.
+
+"How were they different?" inquired Custer, sensible that his parent was
+falling into a reminiscent mood.
+
+"Well, they were more gay for one thing; folks drove in from miles about
+and brought their lunches and et fried chicken. Sometimes there was
+hoss racing in the morning, and maybe a shooting scrape or two; fact is,
+we usually knowed who was to be the next to stretch hemp before the day
+was over,--it gave you something to look forward to! But pshaw! What can
+you expect here? Mount Hope ain't educated up to the sort of thing I'm
+used to! A feller gets his face punched down at Mike Lonigan's or out at
+the Dutchman's by the tracks, and the whole town talks of it, but no one
+ever draws a gun; the feller that gets his face punched spits out his
+teeth and goes on about his business, and that's the end of it except
+for the talk; but where I've been there'd be murder in about the time it
+takes to shift a quid!"
+
+And Mr. Shrimplin shifted his own quid to illustrate the uncertainty of
+human life in those highly favored regions.
+
+"Don't you suppose they'd let you into the jail yard to-morrow if you
+asked?" said Custer, to whom the hanging on the morrow was a matter of
+vital and very present interest.
+
+"Well, son, I ain't _asked!_" rejoined the little lamplighter in a
+rather startled tone.
+
+"Well, don't you think they'd ought to, seeing that you was one of the
+witnesses, and found old Mr. McBride before anybody else did?" persisted
+the boy.
+
+"I won't say but what you might think they'd want me present; but
+Conklin ain't even suggested it, and if he don't think of it I can't say
+as I'll have any hard feelings," concluded Mr. Shrimplin magnanimously.
+
+They were about to enter Mount Hope now; to their right they could
+distinguish the brick slaughter-house which stood on the river bank, and
+which served conveniently to mark the town's corporate limits on the
+east. The little lamplighter spoke persuasively to Bill, and the
+lateness of the hour together with the nearness to his own stable,
+conspired to make that sagacious beast shuffle forward over the stony
+road at a very respectable rate of speed. They were fairly abreast of
+the slaughter-house when Custer suddenly placed his hand on his father's
+arm.
+
+"Hark!" said the boy.
+
+Mr. Shrimplin drew rein.
+
+"Well, what is it, Custer?" he asked, with all that bland indulgence of
+manner which was habitual to him in his intercourse with his son.
+
+"Didn't you hear, it sounded like a cry!" said Custer, in an excited
+whisper.
+
+And instantly a shiver traversed the region of Mr. Shrimplin's spine.
+
+"I guess you was mistaken, son!" he answered rather nervously.
+
+"No, don't you hear it--from down by the crick bank?" cried the boy in
+the same excited whisper. His father was conscious of the wish that he
+would select a more normal tone.
+
+"There!" cried Custer.
+
+As he spoke, a cry, faint and wavering, reached Mr. Shrimplin's ears.
+
+"I do seem to hear something--" he admitted.
+
+"What do you suppose it is?" asked the boy, peering off into the gloom.
+
+"I don't know, Custer, and not wishing to be short with you, I don't
+care a damn!" rejoined Mr. Shrimplin, endeavoring to meet the situation
+with an air of pleasant raillery.
+
+He gathered up his lines as he spoke.
+
+"Why, what are you thinking of?" demanded Custer.
+
+"I was thinking of your ma, Custer!" faltered Mr. Shrimplin weakly. "We
+been gone longer than we said, it must be after eleven o'clock."
+
+"There!" cried Custer again, as a feeble call for help floated up to
+them. "It's from down on the crick bank back of the slaughter-house!"
+
+Mr. Shrimplin was knowing a terrible moment of doubt, especially
+terrible because the doubt was of himself. He was aware that Custer
+would expect much of him in the present crisis, and he was equally
+certain that he would not rise to the occasion. If somebody would only
+come that way! And he listened desperately for the sound of wheels on
+the road, but all he heard was that oft-repeated call for help that came
+wailing from the black shadows beyond the slaughter-house. Suddenly
+Custer answered the call with a reassuring cry.
+
+"Perhaps it's another murder!" he said.
+
+"Oh, my God!" gasped Shrimplin, and there flashed through his mind the
+horror of that other night.
+
+Custer slipped out of the cart.
+
+"Come on!" he cried.
+
+He was vaguely conscious that his father was not seizing the present
+opportunity to distinguish himself with any noticeable avidity. He had
+expected to see that conqueror of bad men and cow-towns, the somewhat
+ruthless but always manful slayer of one-eye Murphy, descend from his
+cart with astonishing alacrity, and heedless in his tried courage stride
+down into the darkness beyond the slaughter-house. But Mr. Shrimplin did
+nothing of the sort, he made no move to quit his seat. Surely something
+had gone very wrong with the William Shrimplin of Custer's fancy, the
+young Bill Shrimplin of Texarcana and similar centers of crime and
+hardihood.
+
+"Custer--" began Mr. Shrimplin, in a shaking voice. "I am wondering if
+it wouldn't be best to drive on into town and get a cop--Oh, my God, why
+don't you quit hollering!"
+
+"Maybe they're killing him now!" cried Custer breathlessly.
+
+He could not yet comprehend his father's attitude in the matter, he
+could only realize that for some wholly inexplicable reason he was
+falling far short of his ideal of him; he seemed utterly to have lost
+his eye for the spectacular possibilities of the moment. Why share the
+credit with a cop, why ask help of any one!
+
+"You don't need no help, pa!" he said.
+
+"Well, I don't know as I do," replied the little man, but he made no
+move to leave his cart, his fears glued him to the seat.
+
+"Come on, then!" insisted Custer impatiently.
+
+"Don't you feel afraid, son?" inquired Mr. Shrimplin, with marked
+solicitude.
+
+"Not with you!"
+
+"Well, I don't know as you need to!" admitted Shrimplin. "But I don't
+feel quite right--I reckon I feel sort of sick, Custer--sort of--"
+
+"Oh, come on--hurry up!"
+
+"I don't know but I ought to see a doctor first--" faltered Mr.
+Shrimplin in a hollow tone.
+
+Misery of soul twisted his weak face pathetically.
+
+"Why you act like you was _afraid!_" said Custer, with withering
+contempt.
+
+His words cut the elder Shrimplin like a knife; but they did not move
+him from his seat in the cart.
+
+"You bet I ain't afraid, Custer,--and that's no way for you to speak to
+your pa, anyhow!"
+
+But what he had intended should be the note of authority was no more
+than a whine of injury.
+
+"Then why don't you come if you ain't afraid?" insisted the boy angrily.
+
+"I don't know as I rightly know _why_ I don't!" faltered Mr. Shrimplin.
+"I feel rotten bad all at once."
+
+"You're a coward!" cried the boy in fierce scorn.
+
+Sobs choked his further utterance while the hot tears blinded him on the
+instant. His idol had turned to clay in his very presence, and in the
+desolation of that moment he wished that he might be stricken with
+death, since life held nothing for him longer.
+
+"Custer--" began Shrimplin.
+
+"Why don't you be a man and go down there?" sobbed the boy.
+
+"It's dangerous!" said Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"Then I'll go!" declared Custer resolutely.
+
+"What--and leave me here alone?" cried the little lamplighter.
+
+For answer Custer ran to the fence; his tears still blinded him and sobs
+wrenched his little body. Twice he slipped back as he essayed to climb,
+but a third attempt took him to the topmost rail of the rickety
+structure.
+
+"Custer!" called his father.
+
+But Custer persisted in the crime of disobedience. He slid down from the
+top rail and stood among the young pokeberry bushes and ragweed that
+luxuriated in the foulness of the slaughter-house yard. It was not an
+especially inviting spot even in broad day, as he knew. Now the
+moonlight showed him bleached animal bones and grinning animal skulls,
+while the damp weeds that clung about his bare legs suggested snakes.
+
+"_Custer!_" cried Mr. Shrimplin again.
+
+But it gained him no response from the boy, who disappeared from before
+his eyes without a single backward glance; whereat the little
+lamplighter cursed querulously in the fear-haunted solitude of the road.
+
+Custer descended the steep bank that sloped down to the water's edge.
+His eyes were fixed on a dense growth of willows and sycamores that
+lined the shore; it was from a spot within their black shadows that the
+cries for help seemed to come. Presently he paused.
+
+"Hullo!" he called, peering into the darkness ahead of him.
+
+He listened intently, but this time his cry was unanswered; all he heard
+was the grunting of some pigs that fed among the offal. The boy shivered
+and his heart seemed to stop beating.
+
+"Hullo!" he called once more.
+
+"Help!" came the answer.
+
+And Custer stumbled forward. As he neared the black shadows of the
+willows he could feel his heart sink like lead through all the reaches
+of his shaking anatomy. He had passed quite beyond the hearing of his
+father's commands and reproaches, and the wash and rush of the river
+came up to him out of the silence.
+
+"Hullo!" cried the boy, pausing irresolutely.
+
+Then seemingly from the earth at his very feet came a faint answer to
+his call, and Custer, forcing his way through a rank growth of weeds and
+briers, stood on the brink of a deep gully that a small brook had worn
+for itself on its way to the river below. In the bed of this brook was a
+dark object that Custer could barely distinguish to be the figure of a
+man. A bruised and bleeding face was upturned.
+
+"Give me your hand--" gasped the man.
+
+Custer knelt on the bank and grasping a tuft of grass to steady himself
+extended his free hand.
+
+"Are you hurt bad?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know--" gasped the man, as he endeavored to draw himself up out
+of the bed of the brook.
+
+But after a moment of fruitless exertion he sank back groaning.
+
+"Go for help!" he said, in a painful whisper. "You are not strong enough
+for this."
+
+"How did you get here?" asked Custer.
+
+"I fell off the railroad bridge, the current landed me here; where am I,
+anyhow?"
+
+"At the brick slaughter-house," said Custer.
+
+"I thought so; can't you get some one to help you?"
+
+But Custer, his reasonable curiosity satisfied, was already on his way
+back to the road. "If only pa has not driven off!" But the senior
+Shrimplin had not moved from the spot where Custer had left him five
+minutes before.
+
+"Is that you, son?" he asked, as Custer appeared at the fence.
+
+"Come here, quick!" commanded the boy.
+
+"For what?" inquired Mr. Shrimplin.
+
+"You needn't be afraid, it's only a man who's fallen off the iron
+bridge. He's down in the bed of the slaughter-house run. I can't get him
+out alone!"
+
+"I'll bet he's good and drunk!" said the little lamplighter.
+
+"No, he ain't, and he's mighty badly hurt!" said the boy hotly.
+
+"Of course, of course, Custer!" said Mr. Shrimplin. "He'd a been killed
+though if he hadn't been drunk."
+
+He climbed out of his cart, and clambered over the fence. Something in
+Custer's manner warned him that any allusions of a jocular nature would
+prove highly distasteful to his son, and he followed silently as Custer
+led the way down to the brook.
+
+"Here's where he is!" said the boy halting. "You get down beside
+him--you're strongest, and I'll stay here and help pull him up while you
+lift!"
+
+"That's the idea, son!" agreed Mr. Shrimplin genially.
+
+And he slid down into the bed of the brook where he struggled to get the
+injured man to his feet. The first and immediate result of his effort
+was that the latter swore fiercely at him, though in a whisper.
+
+"We got to get you out of this, mister!" said the little lamplighter
+apologetically.
+
+A second attempt was made in which they were aided by Custer from above,
+and this time the injured man was drawn to the top of the bank, where
+he collapsed in a heap.
+
+"He's fainted!" said Custer. "Strike a match and see who it is!"
+
+Mr. Shrimplin obeyed, bringing the light close to the bloody and
+disfigured face.
+
+"Why, it's Marsh Langham!" he cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
+
+FAITH IS RESTORED
+
+
+"Custer--" began Mr. Shrimplin, and paused to clear his throat. He was
+walking beside wild Bill's head while Custer in the cart tried to
+support Langham, for the latter had not regained consciousness. "Custer,
+I'm mighty well satisfied with you; I may say that while I always been
+proud of you, I am prouder this moment than I ever hoped to be! How many
+boys in Mount Hope, do you think, would have the nerve to do what you
+just done? I love nerve," concluded Mr. Shrimplin with generous
+enthusiasm.
+
+But Custer was silent, a sense of bitter shame kept him mute.
+
+"Custer," said his father, in a timidly propitiatory tone, "I hope you
+ain't feeling stuck-up about this!"
+
+"I wish it had never happened!" The boy spoke in an angry whisper.
+
+"You wish what had never happened, Custer?"
+
+"About you--I mean!"
+
+Shrimplin gave a hollow little laugh.
+
+"Well, and what about me, son--if I may be allowed to ask?"
+
+"I wish you'd gone down to the crick bank like I wanted you to!"
+rejoined the boy.
+
+Again he felt the hot tears gather, and drew the back of his hand across
+his eyes. The little lamplighter had been wishing this, too; indeed, it
+would for ever remain one of the griefs of his life that he had not done
+so. He wondered miserably if the old faith would ever renew itself. His
+portion in life was the deadly commonplace, but Custer's belief had
+given him hours of high fellowship with heroes and warriors; it had also
+ministered to the bloody-mindedness which lay somewhere back of that
+quaking fear constitutional with him, and which he could no more control
+than he could control his hunger or thirst. His blinking eyelids loosed
+a solitary drop of moisture that slid out to the tip of his hooked nose.
+But though Mr. Shrimplin's physical equipment was of the slightest for
+the rôle in life he would have essayed, nature, which gives the hunted
+bird and beast feather and fur to blend with the russets and browns of
+the forest and plain, had not dealt ungenerously with him, since he
+could believe that a lie long persisted in gathered to itself the very
+soul and substance of truth. Another hollow little laugh escaped him.
+
+"Lord, Custer, I was foolin'--I am always foolin'! It was my chance to
+see the stuff that's in you. Well, it's pretty good stuff!" he added
+artfully.
+
+But Custer was not ready for the reception of this new idea; his
+father's display of cowardice had seemed only too real to him. Yet the
+little lamplighter's manner took on confidence as he prepared to
+establish a few facts as a working basis for their subsequent
+reconciliation.
+
+"I'd been a little better pleased, son, if you'd gone quicker when you
+heard them calls Mr. Langham was letting out; you did hang back, you'll
+remember--it looked like you was depending on me too much; but I got no
+desire to rub this in. What you done was nervy, and what I might have
+looked for with the bringing-up I've given you. I shan't mention that
+you hung back." He shot a glance out of the corners of his bleached blue
+eyes in Custer's direction. "How many minutes do you suppose you was in
+getting out of the cart and over the fence? Not more than five, I'd say,
+and all that time I was sitting there shaking with laughter--just
+shaking with inward laughter; I asked you not to leave me alone! Well, I
+always was a joker but I consider that my best joke!"
+
+Custer maintained a stony silence, yet he would have given anything
+could he have accepted those pleasant fictions his father was seeking to
+establish in the very habiliments of truth.
+
+"I hoped you'd know how to take a joke, son!" said the little
+lamplighter in a hurt tone.
+
+"Were you joking, sure enough?" asked Custer doubtingly.
+
+"Is it likely I could have been in earnest?" demanded Shrimplin,
+hitching up his chin with an air of disdain. "What's my record right
+here in Mount Hope? Was it Andy Gilmore or Colonel Harbison that found
+old man McBride when he was murdered in his store?" And the little
+lamplighter's tone grew more and more indignant as he proceeded. "Maybe
+you think it was your disgustin' and dirty Uncle Joe? _I_ seem to
+remember it was Bill Shrimplin, or do I just dream I was there--but I
+ain't been called a liar, not by no living man--" and he twirled an end
+of his drooping flaxen mustache between thumb and forefinger. "Facts is
+facts," he finished.
+
+"Everybody knows you found old Mr. McBride--" said Custer rather
+eagerly.
+
+"I'm expecting to hear it hinted I didn't!" replied Mr. Shrimplin
+darkly. "I'm expecting to hear it stated by some natural-born liar that
+I set in my cart and bellered for help!"
+
+"But you didn't, and nobody says you did," insisted the boy.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you don't have to take my word for it," said Shrimplin.
+"I'm glad them facts is a matter of official record up to the
+court-house. I don't know, though, that I care so blame much about being
+held up as a public character; if I hadn't a reputation out of the
+common, maybe I wouldn't be misjudged when I stand back to give some one
+else a chance!"
+
+He laughed with large scorn of the world's littleness.
+
+The epic of William Shrimplin was taking to itself its old high noble
+strain, and Custer was aware of a sneaking sense of shame that he could
+have doubted even for an instant; then swiftly the happy consciousness
+stole in on him that he had been weighed in the balance by this
+specialist in human courage and had not been found wanting. And his
+heart waxed large in his thin little body.
+
+They were jogging along Mount Hope's deserted streets when Marshall
+Langham roused from his stupor.
+
+"Where are you taking me?" he demanded of the boy.
+
+"Home, Mr. Langham--we're almost there now," responded Custer.
+
+"Take me to my father's," said Marshall with an effort, and his head
+fell over on Custer's small shoulder.
+
+He did not speak again until Bill came to a stand before Judge Langham's
+gate.
+
+"Are we there?" he asked of the boy.
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"Don't you think we'd better get help?" said Shrimplin.
+
+And Marshall seeming to acquiesce in this, the little lamplighter
+entered the yard and going to the front door rang the bell. A minute
+passed, and growing impatient he rang again. There succeeded another
+interval of waiting in which Shrimplin cocked his head on one side to
+catch the sound of possible footsteps in the hall.
+
+"He says try the knob," called Custer from the cart.
+
+Doing this, Shrimplin felt the door yield, it was not locked; at the
+same instant he made this discovery, however, he heard a footfall in the
+street and so, hurried back to the gate. The new-comer halted when he
+was abreast of wild Bill, and stared first at the cart and then at
+Shrimplin.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" he asked.
+
+It was Watt Harbison.
+
+"Young Mr. Langham has fell off the high iron bridge," said the little
+lamplighter, with a dignity that more than covered his lapse from
+grammar.
+
+"Why--are you badly hurt, Marsh?" cried Watt going close to the cart.
+
+"I don't know, I'm in most infernal pain," said Langham slowly.
+
+"Do you think we can lift him?" asked Shrimplin. "The judge don't seem
+to be at home."
+
+"Your boy would better go to my uncle's; Judge Langham may be there,"
+said Watt.
+
+And Custer promptly slid out of the cart and sped off up the street.
+
+Langham met the delay with grim patience. A strange indifference had
+taken the place of fear, nothing seemed of much moment any more.
+Presently in his stupor he heard the sound of quick steps, then Colonel
+Harbison's voice, and a moment later he was aware that the three men had
+lifted him from the cart and were carrying him along the path toward
+the house. They entered the hall.
+
+"Take me up-stairs," he said, and without pause his bearers moved
+forward.
+
+They saw now that his face was pinched and ghastly under the smear of
+blood that was oozing from an ugly cut on his cheek, and Watt and the
+colonel exchanged significant glances. When they reached the head of the
+stairs Custer pushed open the first door; the room thus disclosed was in
+darkness, and the colonel, with a whispered caution to his companions,
+released his hold on Langham, and striking a match, stepped into the
+room where, having found the chandelier, he turned on the gas. As the
+light flared up, Shrimplin and Watt advanced with their helpless burden.
+It was the judge's chamber they had entered and it was not untenanted,
+for there on the bed lay the judge himself.
+
+It was Langham who first saw that recumbent figure. A hoarse
+inarticulate groan escaped him. He twisted clear of the hands that
+supported him and by a superhuman effort staggered to his feet, he even
+took an uncertain step in the direction of the bed, his starting eyes
+fixed on the spare figure. Then his strength deserted him and with a cry
+that rose to a shriek, he pitched forward on his face.
+
+The colonel strode past the fallen man to the bedside, where for an
+instant he stood looking down on a placid face and into open eyes. As
+his glance wandered he saw that the judge's nerveless fingers still
+grasped the butt of a revolver.
+
+White-faced he turned away. "Is he dead, Colonel?" asked the little
+lamplighter in an awe-struck voice. "Was he murdered?" and visions of
+future notoriety flashed through his mind.
+
+The colonel and Watt exchanged shocked glances.
+
+"Here, Shrimplin, help me with Marsh!" said Watt. "We must get him out
+of here at once!"
+
+They lifted Langham in their arms and bore him into an adjoining room.
+As they placed him upon the bed he recovered consciousness and clutched
+Watt by the sleeve.
+
+"I've been seeing all sorts of things to-night--it began while I lay in
+that ditch with the pigs rooting about me! Where is my father, can't you
+find him?" he demanded eagerly.
+
+Watt turned his head away.
+
+"Then that was not a dream--you saw it, too?" said Langham huskily. He
+dropped back on his pillow. "Dead--Oh, my God!" he whispered, and was a
+long time silent.
+
+Harbison despatched Shrimplin and Custer in quest of a physician, and he
+and Watt busied themselves with removing Marshall's wet clothes. When
+this was done they washed the blood-stains from his face. He did not
+speak while they were thus occupied; his eyes, wide and staring, were
+fixed on vacancy. He was seeing only that still figure on the bed in the
+room adjoining.
+
+There was a brisk step on the stairs and they were joined by Doctor
+Taylor.
+
+"I declare, Marsh, I am sorry for this. You must have had quite a
+tumble, how did you manage it?" he said, as he approached the bed.
+
+Langham's eyes lost something of their intentness as they were turned
+toward the physician, but he did not answer him. The doctor moved a step
+aside with Colonel Harbison.
+
+"Had he been drinking?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+"I don't know," said the colonel.
+
+"Shrimplin has gone for Mrs. Langham--I think they are here now. Don't
+let her come up until I have made my examination. Will you see to this?"
+
+And the colonel quitted the room and hurried down-stairs.
+
+As he gained the floor below, Evelyn entered the house.
+
+"How is Marsh, Colonel Harbison?" she asked.
+
+Her face was colorless but her manner was unexcited; her lips even had a
+smile for the colonel.
+
+"Doctor Taylor is with him, and I trust he will be able to tell you that
+Marshall's injuries are not serious!" said Harbison gently.
+
+"Where is he? I must go to him--"
+
+"The doctor prefers that you wait until he finishes his examination,"
+said the colonel. He drew her into the library. "Evelyn, I must tell
+you--you must know that something else--unspeakably dreadful--has
+happened here to-night!"
+
+"Yes?" The single word was no more than a breath on her full lips.
+
+The colonel hesitated.
+
+"You need not fear to tell me--whatever it is, I--I am prepared for
+anything--" said Evelyn, with a pause between each word.
+
+"The judge is dead," said Harbison simply. "My poor old friend is dead!"
+
+"Dead--Marshall's father dead!" She looked at him curiously, with a
+questioning light in her eyes. "You have not told me all, Colonel
+Harbison!"
+
+"Not told you all--" he repeated.
+
+"How did he die?"
+
+"I think--I fear he shot himself, but of course it may have been the
+purest accident--"
+
+"It was not an accident--" she cried with a sob. "Oh, don't mind what I
+am saying!" she added quickly, seeing the look of astonishment on the
+colonel's face.
+
+"Mrs. Langham may come up if she wishes!" called Doctor Taylor, speaking
+from the head of the stairs.
+
+Evelyn moved down the hall and paused.
+
+"Does Marsh know?" she asked of the colonel.
+
+"Yes, unfortunately we carried him into his father's room," explained
+Harbison.
+
+Evelyn went slowly up the stairs. The horror of the situation was beyond
+words. As she entered the room where Marshall lay, Watt Harbison and the
+doctor silently withdrew into the hall, closing the door after them;
+but Langham gave no immediate sign that he was aware of his wife's
+presence.
+
+"Marsh?" she said softly.
+
+His palpable weakness and his cut and bruised face gave her an
+instinctive feeling of tenderness for him. At the sound of her voice
+Langham's heavy lids slid back and he gazed up at her.
+
+"Have they told you?" he asked in an eager whisper.
+
+"Yes," she said, and there was a little space of time when neither
+spoke.
+
+She drew a chair to his bedside and seated herself. In the next room she
+could hear Doctor Taylor moving about and now and then an indistinct
+word when he spoke with Watt Harbison. She imagined the offices they
+were performing for the dead man. Then a door was softly closed and she
+heard footsteps as they passed out into the hall.
+
+Evelyn kept her place at the bedside without even altering the position
+she had first taken, while her glance never for an instant left the
+haggard face on the pillow. Beyond the open windows the silver light had
+faded from the sky. At intervals a chill wind rustled the long curtains.
+This, and her husband's labored breathing were the only sounds in the
+leaden silence that followed the departure of the two men from the
+adjoining room. She was conscious of a dreary sense of detachment from
+all the world, the little circle of which she had been the center seemed
+to contract until it held only herself. Suddenly Langham turned
+uneasily on his pillow and glanced toward the window.
+
+"What time is it?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"It must be nearly day," said Evelyn. "How do you feel now, Marsh? Do
+you suffer?"
+
+He shook his head. His eyes were turned toward the window.
+
+"What day is this?" he asked after a brief silence.
+
+"What day?" repeated Evelyn.
+
+"Yes--the day of the week, I mean?"
+
+"It's Friday."
+
+"They are going to hang John North this morning!" he said, and he
+regarded her from under his half-closed lids. "I wonder what he is
+thinking of now?" he added.
+
+"Would the governor do nothing?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+She was white to the lips.
+
+"And the Herbert girl--I wonder what she is thinking of!"
+
+"Hush, Marsh--Oh, hush! I--I can not--I must not think of it!" she
+cried, and pressed her hands to her eyes convulsively.
+
+"What does it matter to you?" he said grimly.
+
+"Nothing in one way--everything in another!"
+
+"I wish to God I could believe you!" he muttered.
+
+"You may--on my soul, Marsh, you may! It was never what you
+think--never--never!"
+
+"It doesn't matter now," he said, and turned his face toward the wall.
+
+"Marsh--" she began.
+
+He moved impatiently, and she realized that it was useless to attempt to
+alter what he had come to believe in absolutely. Beyond the windows the
+first pale streaks of a spring dawn were visible, but the earth still
+clothed itself in silence. The moments were racing on to the final act
+of the pitiless tragedy which involved so many lives.
+
+"Marsh--" Evelyn began again.
+
+"I've been a dog to endure your presence in my house!" he said bitterly.
+
+Evelyn was about to answer him when Doctor Taylor came into the room.
+
+"Is he awake?" he questioned.
+
+Langham gazed up into the doctor's face.
+
+"Will I get well?" he demanded.
+
+"I hope so, Marshall--I can see no reason why a few days of quiet won't
+see you up and about quite as if nothing had happened."
+
+"Come--I want to know the truth! Do you think I'm hurt internally, is
+that it?" He sought to raise himself on his elbow but slipped back
+groaning.
+
+"You have sustained a very severe shock, still--" began the doctor.
+
+"Will I recover?" insisted Langham impatiently.
+
+"Oh, _please_, Marshall!" cried Evelyn.
+
+"I want to know the truth! If you don't think you can stand it, go out
+into the hail while I thresh this matter out with Taylor!" But Evelyn
+did not leave her place at his bedside.
+
+"You must not excite yourself!" said Taylor.
+
+"Humph--if you won't tell me what I wish to know, I'll tell you my
+opinion; it is that I am not going to recover. I must see Moxlow. Who is
+down-stairs?"
+
+"Colonel Harbison and his nephew."
+
+"Ask Watt to find Moxlow and bring him here. He's probably at his
+boarding-house."
+
+He spoke with painful effort, and the doctor glanced uncertainly at
+Evelyn, who by a slight inclination of the head indicated that she
+wished her husband's request complied with. Taylor quitted the room.
+
+"Why do you wish to see Moxlow?" Evelyn asked the moment they were
+alone.
+
+"I want him here; I may wish to tell him something--and I may not, it
+all depends," he said slowly, as his heavy lids closed over his tired
+eyes.
+
+It was daylight without, and there was the occasional sound of wheels in
+the street. Evelyn realized with a sudden sense of shock that unless
+Marshall's bloodless lips opened to tell his secret, but a few hours of
+life remained to John North.
+
+A struggle was going on within her, it was a struggle that had never
+ceased from the instant she first entered the room. One moment she found
+she could pray that Marshall might speak; and the next terror shook her
+lest he would, and declare North's innocence and his own guilt. She
+slipped from his bedside and stealing to the window parted the long
+curtains with trembling hands. She felt widely separated in spirit from
+her husband; he seemed strangely indifferent to her; only his bitter
+sense of injury and hurt remained, his love had become a dead thing,
+since his very weakness carried him beyond the need of her. She belonged
+to his full life and there was nothing of tenderness and sympathy that
+survived. A slight noise caused her to turn from the window. Marshall
+was endeavoring to draw himself higher on his pillow.
+
+"Here--lift me up--" he gasped, as she ran to his side.
+
+She passed an arm about him and did as he desired.
+
+"That's better--" he panted.
+
+"Shall I call the doctor?"
+
+He shook his head and, as she withdrew her arm, lay back weak and
+shaken.
+
+"I tell you I am hurt internally!" he said.
+
+"Let me call the doctor!" she entreated.
+
+"What can he do?"
+
+"Marsh, if you believe this--" she began.
+
+"You're thinking of him!" he snarled.
+
+"I am thinking of you, Marsh!"
+
+"He threw you over for the Herbert girl!" he said with an evil ghastly
+smile. "Do you want to save him for her?"
+
+"You don't need to tell all, Marsh--" she said eagerly.
+
+"That's you!" and he laughed under his breath. "I can't imagine you
+advocating anything absolutely right! If I tell, I'll make a clean
+breast of it; if I don't I'll lie with my last breath!"
+
+He was thinking of Joe Montgomery now, as he had thought of him many
+times since he drew himself up out of that merciless yellow flood into
+which the handy-man had flung him. Evelyn looked at him wonderingly. His
+virtues, as well as his vices, were things beyond her comprehension.
+
+The door opened, and Moxlow came into the room. At sight of him,
+Langham's dull eyes grew brilliant.
+
+"I thought you would never get here!" he said.
+
+"This _is_ too bad, Marsh!" said his law partner sympathizingly, as
+Evelyn yielded him her place and withdrew to the window again.
+
+"Where's Taylor?" asked Langham abruptly.
+
+"He's had to go to the jail, he was leaving the house as I got here,"
+replied Moxlow.
+
+There was the noise of voices in the hail, one of which was the
+colonel's, evidently raised in protest, then a clumsy hand was heard
+fumbling with the knob and the door was thrown open, and Joe Montgomery
+slouched into the room.
+
+"Boss, you got to see me now!" he cried.
+
+The prosecuting attorney sprang to his feet with an angry exclamation.
+
+"Let him alone--" said Langham weakly.
+
+Montgomery stole to the foot of the bed and stared down on Langham.
+
+"You tell him, boss," nodding his head toward Moxlow. "I put it up to
+you!" he said.
+
+Langham's glance dwelt for an instant on the handy-man, then it shifted
+back to Moxlow.
+
+"Stop the execution!" he said, and Moxlow thought his mind wandered.
+"North didn't kill McBride," Langham went on. "Do you understand me--he
+is not the guilty man!"
+
+A gray pallor was overspreading his face. It was called there by another
+presence in that room; an invisible but most potent presence.
+
+"Do you understand me?" he repeated, for he saw that his words had made
+no impression on Moxlow.
+
+"Go on, boss!" cried Montgomery, in a fever of impatience.
+
+"Do you understand what I am telling you? John North did not kill
+McBride!" Langham spoke with painful effort. "Joe knows who did--so do
+I--so did my father--he knew an innocent man had been convicted!"
+
+At mention of the judge, Moxlow started. He bent above Langham.
+
+"Marsh, if John North didn't kill McBride, who did?"
+
+But Langham made no reply. Weak, pallid, and racked by suffering, he lay
+back on his pillow. Joe leaned forward over the foot of the bed.
+
+"Tell him, boss; it's no odds to you now--tell him quick for God's sake,
+or it will be too late!" he urged in a fearful voice.
+
+There was a tense silence while they waited for Langham to speak. Moxlow
+heard the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
+
+"If you have anything to say, Marsh--"
+
+Langham raised himself on his elbows and his lips moved convulsively,
+but only a dry gasping sound issued from them; he seemed to have lost
+the power of speech.
+
+"If North didn't kill McBride, who did?" repeated Moxlow.
+
+A mighty effort wrenched Langham, again his lips came together
+convulsively, and then in a whisper he said:
+
+"I did," and fell back on his pillow.
+
+There was a moment of stillness, and then from behind the long curtains
+at the window came the sound of hysterical weeping.
+
+Moxlow, utterly dazed by his partner's confession, looked again at the
+clock on the mantel. Fifteen minutes had passed. It was a quarter after
+eight. His brows contracted as if he were trying to recall some half
+forgotten engagement. Suddenly he turned, comprehendingly, to
+Montgomery.
+
+"My God!--North!" he exclaimed and rushed unceremoniously from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
+
+THE LAST NIGHT IN JAIL
+
+
+Whether John North slept during his last night in jail the deputy
+sheriff did not know, for that kindly little man kept his arms folded
+across his breast and his face to the wall. The night wore itself out,
+and at last pale indications of the dawn crept into the room. There was
+the song of the birds and a little later the rumble of an occasional
+wagon over the paved streets. North stirred and opened his eyes.
+
+"Is it light?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said the deputy.
+
+The day began with the familiar things that make up the round of life,
+but North was conscious that he was thus occupying himself for the last
+time. Then he seated himself and began a letter he had told Brockett he
+wished to write. Once he paused.
+
+"I will have time for this?" he asked.
+
+"All the time you want, John," said Brockett hastily, as he slipped from
+the room.
+
+The sun's level rays lifted and slanted into the cell, while North,
+remote from everything but the memory of Elizabeth's faith and courage,
+labored to express himself. There was the sound of voices in the yard,
+but their significance meant nothing to him now. He wrote on without
+lifting his head. At last the letter was finished and inclosed with a
+brief note to the general.
+
+The pen dropped from North's fingers and he stood erect, he was aware
+that men were still speaking below his window, then he heard footfalls
+in the corridor, and turned toward the door. It was the sheriff and his
+deputy. Conklin seemed on the verge of collapse, and Brockett's face was
+drawn and ghastly.
+
+There was a grim pause, and then Conklin, in a voice that was but a
+shadow of itself, read the death-warrant. When he had finished, North
+cast a last glance about his cell and passed out of the door between the
+two men. They walked the length of the corridor, descended the stairs,
+and entered the jail office. North turned to Conklin.
+
+"I wish to thank you and Brockett for your kindness to me, and if you do
+not mind I should like to shake hands with you both and say good-by
+here," for through the office windows he had caught sight of the group
+of men in the yard.
+
+The sheriff, silent, held out his hand. He dared not trust himself to
+speak. North looked into his face.
+
+"I am sorry for you," he said.
+
+"My God, you may well be!" gasped Conklin.
+
+North shook hands with Brockett and walked toward the door; but as he
+neared it, Brockett stepped in front of him and threw it open. As North
+passed out into the graveled yard, out into the full light of the warm
+spring day, the sheriff mechanically looked at his watch. It was twenty
+minutes after eight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
+
+AT IDLE HOUR
+
+
+From her window Elizabeth saw the gray dawn which ushered in that June
+day steal over the valley below Idle Hour. Swiftly out of the darkness
+of the long night grew the accustomed shape of things. Wooded pastures
+and plowed fields came mysteriously into existence as the light spread,
+then the sun burst through the curtain of mist which lay along the
+eastern horizon, and it was day--the day of _his_ death.
+
+Their many failures trooped up out of the past and mocked at her;
+because of them he must die. They had gone with feverish haste from hope
+to hope to this dread end! Perhaps she had never really believed before
+that the day and hour would overtake them; when effort would promise
+nothing. But now the very sense of tragedy filled that silent morning,
+and her soul was in fearful companionship with it. A flood of wild
+imaginings swept her forward, across the little space of time that was
+left to her lover. Gasping for breath, she struggled with the grim
+horror that was growing up about him. His awful solitude came to her as
+a reproach; she should have remained with him to the end! Was there yet
+time to go back, or would she be too late? When? When? And she asked
+herself the question she had not dared to ask of her father.
+
+The day showed her the distant roofs of Mount Hope; the day showed her
+the square brick tower of the court-house--living or dead, John North
+was in its very shadow. She crouched by the window, her arms resting on
+the ledge and her eyes fixed on the distant tower. How had the night
+passed for him--had he slept? And the pity of those lonely hours brought
+the tears to her burning eyes. She heard her father come slowly down the
+hall; he paused before her door.
+
+"Elizabeth--dear!" his voice was very gentle.
+
+"Yes, father?"
+
+But she did not change her position at the window.
+
+"Won't you come down-stairs, dear?" he said.
+
+"I can not--" and then she felt the selfishness of her refusal, and
+added: "I will be down in a moment, I--I have not quite finished
+dressing--yet!"
+
+John North had thought always of others. In the moment of his supremest
+agony, he had spoken not at all of himself; by word or look he had added
+nothing to the sorrow that was crushing her. This had been genuine
+courage.
+
+"I must remember it always!" she told herself, as she turned away from
+the window. "I must not be selfish--he would not understand it--"
+
+Her father was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, and the glance
+he bent on her was keen with anxiety. Perfect understanding existed
+between them no less now than formerly, but the anguish which had left
+its impress on that white face removed her beyond any attempted
+expression of sympathy from him.
+
+At the end of the hail the open door gave a wide vista of well-kept
+lawns. Elizabeth turned swiftly to this doorway. Her father kept his
+place at her side, and together they passed from the house out into the
+warm day. Suddenly the girl paused, and her eager gaze was directed
+toward Mount Hope--toward _him_.
+
+"Would it be too late to go to him now?" she asked in a feverish
+whisper.
+
+A spasm of pain contracted the old general's haggard face, but the
+question found him mute.
+
+"Would it be too late?" she repeated.
+
+"He would not desire it, Elizabeth," replied her father.
+
+"But would it be too late?" and she rested a shaking hand on his arm.
+
+"You must not ask me that--I don't know."
+
+He tried to meet her glance, which seemed to read his very soul, then
+her hand dropped at her side and she took a step forward, her head bowed
+and her face averted.
+
+Again came the thought of North's awful isolation; the thought of that
+lonely death where love and tenderness had no place; all the ghastly
+terror of that last moment when he was hurried from this living
+breathing world! It was a monstrous thing! A thing beyond
+belief--incredible, unspeakable!
+
+"We can believe in his courage," said her father, "as certainly as we
+can believe in his innocence."
+
+"Yes--" she gasped.
+
+"That is something. And the day will surely come when the world will
+think as we think. The truth seems lost now, but not for always!"
+
+"But when he is gone--when he is no longer here--"
+
+The general was silent. North had compelled his respect and faith; for
+after all, no guilty man could have faced death with so fine a courage.
+There was more to him than he had ever been willing to admit in his
+judgment of the man. Whatever his faults, they had been the faults of
+youth; had the opportunity been given him he would have redeemed
+himself, would have purged himself of folly. "Some day," the general was
+thinking, "I will tell her just what my feelings for North have been,
+how out of disapproval and doubt has come a deep and sincere regard."
+
+The sun swept higher in the heavens, and the gray old man with the
+strong haggard face, and the girl in whom the girl had died and the
+woman had been born, walked on; now with dragging steps, when the stupor
+of despair seized her, now swiftly as her thoughts rushed from horror to
+horror.
+
+The world, basking in the warmth of that June sun, seemed very peaceful
+as they looked out across the long reaches of the flat valley, and on to
+the distant town, with the lazy smoke of its factory chimneys floated
+above the spires and housetops. But the peace that was breathed out of
+the great calm heart of nature was not for these two! The girl's sense
+was only one of fierce rebellion at the injustice which was taking--had
+taken, perhaps, the life of the man she loved; an injustice that could
+never make amends--so implacable in its exactions, so impotent in its
+atonements!
+
+They were nearing the limits of the grounds; back of them, among its
+trees, loomed the gray stone front of Idle Hour. Her father rested a
+hand upon Elizabeth's shoulder.
+
+"I will try to be brave, too--as he was always--" she said pausing.
+
+She stood there, a tragic figure, and then turned to her father with
+pathetic courage. She would take up what was left for her. She had her
+memories. They were of happiness no less than sorrow, for she had loved
+much and suffered much.
+
+With a final lingering glance townward, she turned away. Then a startled
+cry escaped her, and her father looked up.
+
+John North was coming toward them across the lawn.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUST AND THE UNJUST***
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